“Lada,” Mehmed called, his voice a rough whisper carried on the heavy night air and trailed by the scent of broken flowers.

She could see him, backlit by the distant garden party. He turned one way, then the other, searching. A giddy thrill went through her, seeing him desperate to find her.

The memory of the last few weeks was as sharp on her tongue as the taste of him, and so she said nothing. Let him wait, let him search, let him be alone. She would go to him when she chose to, just as earlier in her bedroom she had let him touch her only where she allowed.

But his head turned in her direction, and he walked forward, steps tentative, posture searching. He reached out and found her face without fail.

“How did you know where I was?” she asked, disappointed and thrilled in equal measure.

Mehmed’s laugh was a silent exhalation. “This is the best area of the garden tactically. Your back is protected, but you have an open view of everything going on, while remaining hidden. Of course you are here.”

Lada’s scowl at being predictable was erased as Mehmed’s mouth met hers with greedy intensity. He pushed his body against hers, pressing her back into the tree. She grabbed his shoulders and spun him around, pinning him there. He smiled against her mouth, and she bit his bottom lip, hard enough that he startled. He twisted his fingers in her hair, pulling her in tighter, his mouth leaving hers and finding her neck. Everywhere he touched burned with feverish heat, aching and tender. He put his hands around her wrists, then paused. “What are these?” he murmured against her neck, feeling at the leather braces beneath her sleeves.

Her heartbeat was almost as loud as her breathing, and she closed her eyes to hold her breath and focus on—

There was a noise behind her. She smashed a hand over Mehmed’s mouth, muffling his own heavy breathing. Turning so her back was pressed against him, she squinted out into the night.

A shadowy figure crept toward them. He wore no Janissary cap. A predatory angle to his body eliminated his being a servant. Servants walked with submissive, downturned lines. This man prowled with hands held at the ready. An errant ray of light flashed like a beacon off something metal in one of those hands.

Lada slipped both daggers free of their sheaths. The hunter was directly in front of them, leaning forward in an attempt to see into the deeper darkness beneath the tree.

Lada leaped out, one arm blocking the hand that held a weapon, her other dagger finding its goal with a wet whisper of success. The hunter was still for one eternal moment, then, with an agonized scream escaping his lips into the night, he crumpled to the ground. Lada stood over him as his life pulsed frantically from his neck. Two twitches, and then nothing, where once a man had been.

It was only when Lada realized she could see well enough to notice the deep red of her target’s blood that she looked up. An enterprising tortoise had finally made its way to the depths of the garden. She was illuminated—dagger winking playfully, hand covered in blood, Mehmed standing behind her.

“Lada?” he asked. His eyes were fixed on the body.

But the rest of the garden party, including Murad himself, stared in horror right at her.

“ARE YOU CERTAIN YOU feel well?” Salih leaned forward intently. His eyes, which turned down at either corner and made him appear perpetually mournful, wrinkled in concern. He was eighteen, only a couple of years older than Radu, kind and anxious and always eager to be in Radu’s company.

Radu nodded, unable to shake off his daze.

Mehmed’s lips.

Mehmed’s hands.

Mehmed’s heart.

Tangled up in Lada, not in him. Lada, who could not love someone else if her life depended on it. Lada, who had taken all their father’s attention, who had preferred Bogdan over her own brother. Lada, who had abandoned Radu to beatings and lonesomeness his whole life. Lada, who was cold and vicious and loyal only to herself.

Lada, who was not even beautiful.

“Am I not handsome?” Radu blurted out, the words spilling like tears from his mouth.

Salih’s eyebrows raised, making his expression almost comical with its mix of sorrow and surprise. “You—you are.”

“Am I not deserving of love?”

The surprise in Salih’s face shifted to something raw and terrified. “You are.”

Radu dropped his head. What did he know of love? This was not a love that he had heard of, this was not a love sung about by poets, celebrated in stories. This was something…else, something he had no words for. And who could he speak to? Who could tell him how to love another man?

Or how to stop?