Lada shrugged, shifting away from the intensity of Mehmed’s pose, his body radiating energy so near hers. It was only because she had not been around him much these last three months that his presence affected her so. Or maybe it was because she could not help noticing he was growing taller, more handsome, more…No. She needed to focus on something else. Anything else. “Constantinople? This soon?”
He walked away from her, began pacing. “We have a five-year peace treaty with Hungary and Hunyadi. My borders are as peaceful as they ever were. This is why I am here. This is why I was born.”
“Your father started out his rule trying the same thing, and it brought him nothing but trouble.”
A line formed between Mehmed’s fine brows. “He had too many fronts. His brothers trying to claim what was his, trying to steal land. He had to attend to problems at home.”
“And your advisors support you?”
His scowl deepened. “Not all of them, no. But I am sultan. They must follow me.”
“A sultan who summoned his father to fight his first battle.”
Mehmed’s face erupted into a storm. “That was your idea! If you—”
Lada heard the noise before she registered that anything was wrong. An instinct honed by all those days in the forest with Bogdan hunting her, a body trained with focus provided by desperation and loneliness. A sudden sense of wrongness she could have ignored.
She threw herself forward and tackled Mehmed as a dagger flew past where his chest had been. It cut her shoulder before clanging sharply against the wall and falling to the ground. Lada and Mehmed hit the floor hard, with Mehmed letting out a breathless groan. Lada rolled forward, picking the dagger up, then turned and threw it as soon as she spied a moving target.
The man dodged a fatal blow, the dagger glancing off his side. His face was wrapped in black cloth, features hidden; his clothes were plain.
Their assailant pulled out another dagger, crouching defensively and stalking to the side, trying to find a better angle on Mehmed. Lada kicked her friend toward the desk. “Get behind it!” she shouted.
The man passed his dagger from hand to hand, movements lazy and unhurried as Mehmed scrambled behind the desk and shouted for his guards.
The assassin did not seem concerned.
His eyes crinkled in a smile as he looked at Lada. He pointed the dagger at her, then looked toward Mehmed. Lada launched herself forward, barreling into him with all the momentum she could build. He was strong, lean and lithe, but she was solid and lower to the ground. She hit him squarely in his middle, the air leaving his lungs in a rush as she took him to the ground. His grip on the dagger loosened, and it skittered away, out of both of their reach.
The assassin was stunned, but he would recover fast. Lada punched him in the face, again and again, but her angle was off and she could not use as much strength as she hoped to. He grabbed her wrists, pulling her to the side. Her face was forced close to his, his hands too strong to break free from. She slammed her forehead into his nose, then bit into his cheek where his head wrap had come loose.
He cried out and released her wrists. Rolling away, she found the dagger and spun around as he stumbled to his feet. He dodged her first lunge, moved with her in a dance she had practiced many times in the ring with Nicolae. A dance they both knew the same moves to. Even bloodied and dazed, he was more than a match for her.
And still no help had come.
Her training was failing her, the jabs and the lunges anticipated, killing blows knocked aside. One of these times he would catch her wrist and get the dagger, and then he would kill her and Mehmed.
Despair welled up in her. A look of triumph shaped the assassin’s eyes into omens of death. He knew everything she would do. He only had to outlast her. She was a girl, and a child. He was stronger, and faster, and…
With a scream of rage, Lada abandoned her learned moves, her careful training. She flew at him like a wild boar, all fury and animal instinct. He did not know where to block because her blows made no sense, her movements had no grace. She slashed at his face, and when he grabbed her wrists, she bit his hand, clenching her jaw, teeth clamping onto bone. She kept her teeth in him as he shook her, slamming the dagger into his side again and again, following him as he fell away from her, trying to break free. She stayed on top, stabbing, not caring where she hit, not going for a careful, efficient blow. An animal scream, muffled by his hand, continued from her throat.
“Lada!”
Shaking and panting, she blinked her eyes clear of the haze that had descended. Her jaw would not unlock, the muscles so tight she wondered if she would have this man’s hand in her mouth forever. Finally, with pain shooting through her whole face, she managed to part her teeth enough for his hand to fall free. It was then that she tasted the blood that filled her mouth, then that she realized she was on the floor, on top of the man.