And I Darken (The Conquerors Saga #1)(9)

But after seven years of study—seven years in this city, in the castle—she could read, write, and speak Latin as well as anyone. It was the language of contracts and letters and God, formal and stiff in her mouth. Wallachian was considered a low language. It was a spoken language, rarely written.

But oh, how lovely it tasted on the tongue.

“Ladislav,” the tutor prompted. He was a young man, clean-shaven because he did not own land and thus was not allowed to grow facial hair. Lada found him insufferable, but her father insisted she be educated alongside Radu. In fact, her father’s exact words had been It is a waste to educate the mewling worm, but at least we can include Lada, who has a brain worth shaping. Pity she’s a girl.

Smarter, stronger, bigger. She had never forgotten the reasons her father listed that she could not have hoped to beat him all those years ago. Her goal since then had been to earn his love, to show him that she could be all those things. It was a challenge she chased relentlessly. Because on the other side of that challenge—when she had achieved smarter, stronger, bigger—she was certain her father would look at her with more pride and love than he ever directed at her older brother, Mircea. He was twenty now, a grown man, and her father’s heir. Mircea campaigned when battles called for it, soothed tension between boyar families, ate with her father, planned with her father, rode with her father. He was the right hand of Wallachia; it was his hand that was always pulling hair, pinching skin, finding little ways to hurt someone that no one else could see.

And someday he would be prince.

If he lived that long.

But before then, before it was too late, Lada would take Mircea’s place in their father’s heart. That day he had returned the knife to her and pronounced her the daughter of Wallachia had been the first time he had ever truly looked at her, and the memory of that was both a pleasure and an agony she had been nurturing ever since.

She repeated the last sentence her tutor had said in Latin, then said it in Hungarian and Turkish for good measure.

“Very good.” The tutor shifted uncomfortably on the wooden stool he carried with him. “Though we would all be better served learning indoors.”

Her last tutor had slapped her for demanding to go outside. She broke his nose. This tutor never did more than make gentle suggestions, which were summarily ignored.

“This is my country.” Lada stood, stretching her arms over her head, stiff sleeves straining against her movements. She did not like staying in the castle to study. Every day she made them ride out from the walled inner city, past the smaller homes and then the hovels and then the filthy, seedy outskirts of life clinging to the capital, into the fresh, green countryside. The horses were left in fields brilliant with purple flowers, while she and Radu studied in the shade of dense, pale-barked trees.

“The country is not yours.” Radu scraped a stick against the ground to write out his Latin verbs.

“Is this not Wallachia?”

Radu nodded. He had a smudge of dirt on his nose. It made her brother look small and ridiculous. It irritated Lada. He was always with her, an appendage to her life, and she never could decide how to feel about him. Sometimes, when a smile broke across his face like sun reflecting off a stream, or she saw him relax into sleep, she was filled with an unaccountable sort of ache. It terrified her.

“Sit up straight.” She tugged on his chin and wiped his nose with her shirt so viciously that he cried out and tried to get away. She gripped his chin tighter. “This is Wallachia, and I am the daughter of Wallachia. Our father is the prince of Wallachia. This is my country.”

Radu finally stopped struggling, glaring at her instead. Tears pooled in his big eyes. He was so pretty, this brother of hers. His was a face that made women stop in the lanes to coo at him. When he flashed his dimpled smile, the cook gave him extra servings of whatever he loved best. And when Lada saw him hurt, she wanted to protect him, which made her angry. He was weak, and protecting him felt like a weakness. Mircea certainly suffered no such weakness on her behalf.

She let go of Radu’s chin and rubbed the back of her head. Last month Mircea had yanked her hair so hard he had left a bald spot, which only now was starting to fill in. Girls should know their place, he had hissed.

Lada lifted her face to a ray of sunshine fighting its way through the leaves. This. This is my place. Her father had given it to her, and Wallachia would always be theirs.

Radu kicked at his scribblings in the dirt. “Not everyone wants the country to be ours.”

“Can we return to—” the tutor started, but Lada held up a hand, silencing him.

Dropping to a crouch, she picked up a round stone, one perfectly fitted to her palm. Balanced. Heavy. Spinning, she launched the stone through the air. A thud was followed by a sharp cry of anger, and then laughter. Bogdan stood from where he had been creeping along the ground, trying to sneak up on them.

“Try harder, Bogdan.” Lada’s sneer shifted into a smile. “Come sit. Radu is mangling Latin.”

“Radu is doing very well.” The tutor frowned at Bogdan. “And I am not employed to educate the son of a nursemaid.”

Lada stared down at him with all the cold, imperious command she was born to. “You are employed to do as you are told.”

The tutor, who was very fond of his straight, unblemished nose, sighed wearily and continued the lesson.



“Now in Hungarian,” Lada commanded Bogdan, her walk quick and assured down the hallway. Tirgoviste was set up like a great Byzantine city: castle in the middle, manors of the boyars circling it, dwellings of the artisans and performers who earned the patronage of the boyars circling that, and then, outside the massive stone walls, everyone else. Within the walls, homes were painted a dazzling array of reds and blues, yellows and greens. Riots of flowers and tinkling fountains competed for attention. But the stench of human waste lurked beneath everything, and the poor and sick masses seemed to creep ever closer to the inner city. Lada had even seen their shacks built against the wall itself.