And I Darken

by Kiersten White

“Halima Hatun,” the eunuch announced. She bowed, straightening with a shy smile for Lada and a low wave. Lada had forgotten how pretty she was and quickly tamped down a flare of jealousy. Mehmed would not want a woman who had borne his father’s son.

  Mehmed stood, confusion masked with a bright tone. “Halima, to what do I owe the honor?”

  “You sent for me. To discuss my future, the messenger said.”

  “Yes.” Mehmed nodded, gesturing for her to sit. He gave Lada and Radu a puzzled look when her back was turned. “Yes, your future. Are you well?”

  “I am, thank you.”

  “And little Ahmet?”

  Her face transformed with eager joy. “He has much spirit. I think he and Beyazit are nearly the same age.”

  The name of Mehmed’s son stabbed Lada in a place other than her side. She shifted uncomfortably, wishing Halima would leave.

  “Oh!” Halima put a hand to her mouth in embarrassment. “I have not offered my congratulations on the birth of Mustafa. Two sons! What good fortune.”

  “Another son?” Lada spoke before she could stop herself, the words leaving her more wounded than Ilyas had.

  Another son.

  And this one not conceived before their first kiss, before Mehmed made her feel as though she were the only woman in the world who mattered.

  Another son.

  Radu was all false cheer. “With so much excitement, you must have forgotten to mention it.”

  Mehmed cleared his throat, not looking at them. “Yes, Gulsa had to stay behind in Amasya. It was not safe for her to travel so far into her confinement. I received word only yesterday. How did you know?”

  Halima tipped her head conspiratorially. “Huma told me. She knows everything.”

  “Yes, she does. Well, I am afraid I have nothing official to tell you. If I can do anything for you while we arrange for your future, please let me know. You are welcome to stay here as long as you wish. This is your home.”

  Lada wondered why he had not yet sent Ahmet away and separated him from his mother. But even that was quickly pushed aside. Gulsa. Who was she? What did she look like? When had Mehmed visited her? What had he thought about while he planted his seed in yet another woman?

  Halima bowed prettily, and Lada caught a flash of relief in the other woman’s face that the interview was over. After Halima left, Lada kept her eyes fastened on the door. Drowning in her own pool of misery, she could not look at Mehmed. How could she continue to ignore the harem if its occupants did not stop giving birth to Mehmed’s sons?

  No one spoke.

  As though Lada’s obsessive thoughts of the harem summoned her, Huma appeared in the doorway.

  “Mother.” Mehmed said the word with tiredness, not reverence. “I did not send for you.”

  “Just as you did not send for me when Ilyas tried to kill you.”

  “How did you—” Mehmed sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I have taken care of it.”

  “No, you foolish boy. You have not. I have taken care of it.”

  Mehmed’s exhaustion gave way to barely concealed anger. “What do you mean?”

  “When will you realize that they see you as expendable because there is another option living under your very protection? If you can be replaced, they will try to do it. Again and again and again. And all it will take is one dagger, one poisoned meal, one moment where you are not on guard, and then my sacrifice will be for naught.”

  “It is not your concern.”

  “It is my only concern! But never worry, my stupid little boy. I have done what all your guards could not. I have made you irreplaceable.”

  Lada sat up, previous conversations with Huma humming through her mind with sudden intensity. A wrongness seized her stomach and would not release it. “Mehmed did not send for Halima,” she said.

  Huma lifted her emaciated shoulders dismissively. “While she was meeting with the sultan, her son was drowned.”

  Mehmed exploded across the room, pressing his mother against the wall. “What did you do?”

  “What I have always done. Protected you.”

  “No. No. Tell me you did not— He is an infant.”

  “He was a threat. And now he is gone.”

  For the endless span of a single breath, Lada thought Mehmed would kill his mother. Then the tension fled his body. He staggered back, falling into a chair. “He was the same age as Beyazit.”

  “I have done what you were not willing to. I have secured your legacy. You are now free to be the sultan you were born to be. The sultan I gave birth to. My son. My empire.”

  “Get out.”

  “We should discuss—”

  Mehmed stood. Rage gone, despair gone, he stared down at his mother with all the icy authority he commanded. “Guard.”

  Stefan, the Janissary on duty, stood at attention.

  “Please escort Huma to her rooms. Bring as many men with you as you need. See that she does not speak with any of her attendants, and that the eunuchs are barred from communicating with her. I will send directions for where she is to be taken.”

  Huma shook, her thin, yellowed lips pulled back to reveal gray gums and more black spaces than teeth. “What are you doing? You cannot send me away! I am the valide sultan, the mother of the sultan!”

  “No,” Mehmed said. “You betrayed me. You are nothing.”

  “Betrayed you? You have no idea what I have done for you. How many times I have saved your life. If going behind your back to keep you alive is betrayal, then they should be banished with me.” She pointed a bony, twisted finger at Lada and Radu.

  Mehmed waved in disgust at Stefan. He took Huma’s arm and led her, wide-eyed and shaking, out of the room. Lada thought they had escaped, but then Mehmed turned on them. “What was she talking about? What did you two do?”

  Radu looked like a rabbit caught in a trap. Lada understood his fear. Mehmed would never forgive them when he found out their role in his loss of the throne during his first rule. And Huma had no reason not to tell him, not now. She had no more leverage to employ, and Lada had no doubt she would try to burn everyone down with her.

  Tears filled Radu’s eyes, despair pulling his head low. He was no longer the man Lada did not know. He was the boy on the ice, the boy in the forest, the boy in the thorns.

  He was hers.

  “Radu had nothing to do with it,” Lada said. “It happened when you first came to the throne. After I killed the assassin Janissary, I knew it would never stop. Radu was certain you could be sultan. He was stupid and shortsighted, so I went to Huma. It was my idea to have the Janissaries revolt then, to contact Halil and work with him to get your father back to the throne.”

  Lada watched as shock and anger transformed Mehmed’s face from the one she knew and loved into something too distant to touch. It was physically painful to watch. She did not look away.

  “How could you? All the power Halil gained! All the years I lost…”

  Lada lifted her head higher. “I did it to save your life. I would make the same choice again.”

  Mehmed sat, refusing to look at her. “I cannot—I cannot think about this right now. Not with what just happened. Ahmet. Little Ahmet.” A curtain came down over his face, as though he had cut off all thoughts of Lada’s betrayal until he could sort through them.

  Radu put a hand on Mehmed’s shoulder, but he stared at Lada. “Thank you,” he mouthed.

  She did not acknowledge it or the immense gratitude welling in his eyes. She owed him a debt. Nothing was more important to him than Mehmed’s trust. Perhaps it would have been kinder to break that trust and force a removal. Maybe then Radu could be free of the impossible love he carried. But she could not do that to him, not when it was so easy to take this blow on her own shoulders.

  “They will think I ordered Ahmet’s death,” Mehmed said, oblivious to Radu’s feelings, as always. “Halima was with me when it happened. I will have to tell them, it was Huma, it was not—”

  “No,” Lada said. “They
will think it was your order no matter what you say. If you claim it was your mother, it will make you look like a murderer and a liar.”

  “What am I to do?”

  Lada thought of what she would do. This was a time for power, not subtlety. No one could question that the sultan was in charge. “Make it law. You know what your father’s brothers did. The wars they fought are still raw wounds. Your father had to kill them all eventually. Make a decree that when a sultan is crowned, it is legal for him to kill his brothers for the security of the empire.”

  Mehmed had never looked at her with genuine horror before, but he did now. She stopped herself from taking a step back and steeled herself against the fear that, between this and the revelation of her betrayal, she had lost his love.

  She would not be weak to avoid his judgment. That was not who she was.

  “You think my mother was right to do this?” Mehmed asked.

  “I think…” Lada pushed away the image of hopeful, happy Halima glowing as she talked about her son. The son who was being murdered even as she spoke. Did she know yet? Had she learned her whole world had been taken from her? “I think sometimes when balancing a nation against a single life, impossible decisions must be made. Huma made the decision. Whether it was right or wrong is beside the point. It is done.”

  “If I make that law, I am already condemning one of my own sons to death.”

  Lada had not thought of that and cringed at the accusation in Mehmed’s eyes. Did he think her so monstrous, that she craved the death of his sons? She shook her head. “If you do not make this law, you are allowing a future civil war that will claim untold thousands of your citizens.”

  “These are lives, Lada,” Radu said. “How can you speak of them like they are matters of simple mathematics, a problem to be solved?”

  Lada stood, a hand to her side against the pain of her wound. “Because thinking like that is the only way to keep from losing our minds.”

  “What about our souls?” Mehmed whispered.

  Before Lada walked out, she paused at the door. “Souls and thrones are irreconcilable.”

  That evening she sat next to Bogdan. They were alone in the palace barrack’s mess hall. She had not spoken with or even seen him since the assassination attempt. This was the first time she had felt up to joining her men for a meal, but most of them were on duty. Mehmed trusted them more than ever, and they were all in heavy rotation.

  “How are you?” Bogdan asked.

  Lada gave him a flat look, wishing she were strong enough to physically punish him for asking such a stupid question. “I was stabbed and beaten by a trusted mentor a week ago.”

  He matched her expression with a similar one. “I was there.”

  She wondered if he had been scared, if he had been angry that she might die so soon after they were reunited. But his face betrayed nothing.

  “I meant how is it being in mourning.”

  Bogdan was a fool if he thought she was mourning the death of Mehmed’s half brother. She was not happy that the boy had been killed, but she could not pretend to oppose Huma’s rationale. It would be hypocrisy to dress in sackcloth and ashes. Disrespectful, even.

  “Is it common knowledge, then?” she asked. Radu had sent her a note that Mehmed was going to make the fratricide decree, but she had thought it would be tomorrow. She had also been hurt that Mehmed had not asked for her advice on what to say.

  She wondered how long it would take him to forgive her for everything that had transpired. The fear that perhaps he would not be able to nagged at her. Where would she be then?

  Bogdan shrugged. “Petru told me.”

  Lada frowned. “Petru was not on duty today. How did he hear about Ahmet?”

  “Who is Ahmet?”

  “Mehmed’s half brother.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your father.” Bogdan stopped, his jaw tightening. “They did not tell you.”

  Lada knew she was looking at Bogdan’s face, but she could not see it. She could not see anything. “My father is dead?”

  “I am sorry. Petru thought you knew. Hunyadi and the boyars killed your father. Mircea, too.”

  Lada nodded, her head bobbing up and down of its own volition. A roar filled her ears. A roar like the wind rushing along the banks of the Arges River, tearing at a tree growing sideways out of the rock. “When?”

  “Petru overheard Mehmed and Radu a week ago. Right before the revolt.”

  “A week.” Her hand darted to the pouch around her neck—but it was gone.

  She had not realized it, had not felt for it since she fought Ilyas.

  It was gone.

  ALL RADU WANTED TO do was sleep, but the knocking would not cease. He stumbled to the door and yanked it open, ready to yell at whoever was there. The ghost of his sister stood in the doorway. Her eyes were large and vacant, her face as smooth as a fading memory.

  “Our father is dead,” Lada said.

  Radu leaned heavily against the doorframe. Lada drifted in past him. He shut the door, closing them in.

  “Why did you keep this from me?”

  Radu was glad it was dark so he could not see her face. “I did not know how to tell you.” He reached for her hand. It felt cold and tiny in his own. “I am sorry. I know you loved him.”

  “I did not love him. I worshipped him. And then he betrayed us by being human—so worthlessly, weakly human. He left us here with nothing and made it impossible for us to return home.”

  “He terrified me.”

  Lada laughed sharply. “Little brother, everyone terrified you.”

  “That is true.”

  “Mircea is dead, too.”

  “Yes.” Radu thought of the raw grief Mehmed had been consumed by after the murder of his infant half brother. Radu felt nothing like that when he thought of Mircea’s death. Perhaps that meant something was wrong with him. He wondered if Lada mourned Mircea. He did not ask.

  Lada spoke. “Do you remember that summer? When Father took us out of the city?”

  “Yes. I was bitten by so many bugs I could scarcely move.”

  “I thought he would see me. I thought if we left Tirgoviste, if we left stupid Mircea, if we left behind the boyars and their ceaseless bickering, he would see what I was becoming to please him. For one day, I thought he did. It was the happiest day of my life. And then he left, as he always did.”

  “He loved you.”

  “You sound so certain. How do you know?”

  “Because he tried to save you, that day the sultan claimed us.”

  “He failed.”

  “But he tried. That was more than he did for me.”

  After a brief silence, Lada let out a harsh bray of laughter. “I keep thinking how angry Mircea must be to be dead.”

  “I had the same thought!”

  They laughed, and then it was quiet for a few warm minutes, safe and dark with their childhood between them. The things they had had and the things they had lost that only they could ever understand.

  “I have something for you.” Radu reached into a box on his side table and pulled out a locket. “That night. When the physician was sewing you back together, I found your little pouch. The one you always wear around your neck. It was ruined, but…Well, I saved what was inside and had this made for you.”

  He held out the necklace. The metal locket was heavy and cold in his hand.

  With a sniffling gasp, Lada lowered the chain around her neck and clutched the locket to her chest. “Thank you. I have lost too much recently.”

  She rested her head against his shoulder. Radu knew some of what she lost had been solely to protect him. As she had always done, in her own way. He breathed out a sigh and steadied himself to tell her he was sorry. That he loved her. That he understood her.

  “The throne is yours,” Lada said, puncturing the space and bringing the night with all its dark terrors back down on Radu.

  “N
o.”

  “It is.” Her voice rose, excitement kindling there and growing toward a fire as only Lada could burn with. “Nothing holds us here now. We are beholden to none, ransom against nothing. You could claim the prince title. Mehmed will support you, he will be glad of it. We could go back to Wallachia, together, strong, and no one could tell us—”

  “No! Lada. No. I do not want to go back.”

  “But it is our home.”

  Radu shook his head, rising to sit on the edge of his bed. “My home is here.”

  “You mean Mehmed is here.” There was no accusation in her voice, but the way she said it stung Radu.

  “Yes.” He did not pretend it was otherwise, but he could not explain to her the other reasons. The mosques, with their domed towers making him feel insignificant in the most comforting way. Praying in perfect union with his brothers around him. Having a place, a life, a position where he was valued. And yes, doing it all by Mehmed’s side. Even if it would never be as much as Radu needed.

  As though following his train of thought, Lada said, “He can never love you. Not the way you love him.”

  Radu laughed, but it sounded old and brittle. “Do you think I do not know that? And still this is better than what we can ever hope for in Wallachia. How can you not see that? You have him, Lada. You have his heart and his eyes and his soul. I have seen the way you wait for him to look at you, the way you relish his attentions. You pretend you do not love him, but you cannot lie to me.” He paused. Then, unable to stop himself, he slipped into a goading tone. “No one will ever love you as he does—as an equal—and you know it. You will not leave that. You cannot.”

  She stiffened. Radu saw her fingers curl into fists, ready for a fight. “I can. I have already started. He will never forgive me for admitting my betrayal.”

  Radu was reminded of her beating the boyar sons in the forest outside Tirgoviste. Those same fists had always defied everything expected of her. Now he had made her love of Mehmed a challenge to be overcome. His heart sank as he realized that by taunting her that she could not leave, he had virtually guaranteed she would do exactly that.

  Maybe he had known that all along.

  “Come with me,” she commanded. “I will not go home without you.” She waited, then shocked Radu with her desperate, soft tone. “You chose me.”