She had thought the return of the soldiers would signal an end to the directionless melancholy that had plagued her during Mehmed’s six-month absence, but it only sharpened it. Even Radu was distracted and cranky, worried that Mehmed would never return, worried about what Huma would say to keep him away.
The sun beat brutally overhead as Lada stripped down to her underclothes. She had taken to wearing long tunics, tied with a sash, with loose breeches underneath. Huma disapproved, but if it scandalized anyone in the fortress or the village, no one bothered—or dared—to say so. She had also had new leather cuffs made to wear on either wrist, a hidden knife in both. These she unbuckled and laid on her clothes, alongside her boots. Finally, she undid the white scarf that bound her tangled and knotted hair, and lifted it from her neck. She held the scarf out, looking at it. Wondering if she always chose white because it looked like a Janissary cap.
But nothing would ever look enough like one.
With a sigh, she slipped into the hidden pool, nestled among rocks and hidden by trees. The water was a deep green, and so cold it took her breath away and left her toes numb.
It was still their glorious secret, a place that felt truly theirs. When they got back to Amasya, Mehmed had been so sad, so frustrated. He had not wanted to lose the throne. So Lada and Radu had bent all their attentions to distracting him. They made a game of how often they could evade Mehmed’s guards and retreat to the pool. It had been an escape they had all needed. But with Mehmed gone, Radu had not wanted to come here. Lada, too, had not been here since, dreading the quiet and the solitude.
Until today. Everywhere she went, no matter how many people surrounded her, she knew now she was alone. She may as well be alone in a place that was beautiful.
Closing her eyes, she floated on her back and let herself hang, only her face above the water, the sunlight brilliant and hot in contrast to the cold water. Her breasts floated up beneath her clinging undershirt, which she found both amusing and oddly disturbing. While she had not grown much in stature, becoming thicker and more solid instead of taller, her breasts had become soft, full things. She had been forced to adjust her knife-throwing and her archery—always her weakest skill—to account for the unwieldy changes. And now here they were, bobbing gently in the water, unavoidable.
There was something claustrophobic about breasts.
Her nipples, too, seemed animated with a will of their own. Sometimes they were flat and small; other times they puckered and stuck out. She suspected it was the cold now, but on a few other occasions it had happened. Her nurse could have explained it to her.
Or Huma. Though she would cut off her breasts before asking Huma for advice about her body.
Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have a mother. Would she have guided Lada through her traumatic first bleeding, reassured her that no, she was not dying? Helped her hide the evidence for longer than she had been able to?
No. Her mother would have crawled away in terror or made the nurse do it.
Lada let her face go underneath the water. A mother. A nurse. Even a friend. Perhaps if she had more women in her life, she would not feel so outraged at the physical and social demands of being one.
She thought of needlework. Of the weight of layers of dresses and the pinching of shoes. Of downcast eyes and well-timed smiles. Of her mother. Of Huma, Halima, and Mara. All the ways to be a wife, all the ways to be a woman.
No, more women in her life would change nothing.
And she could still learn to shoot a bow better, breasts be damned. She put her hands on either breast and squeezed until they hurt, trying to figure out what Ivan had wanted. What could possibly be the allure of the fleshy mounds? And then she screamed, as a body half landed on her, pushing her underwater. Choking, she clawed her way to the surface.
Only to find Mehmed’s smiling face inches from her own.
Her anger at being startled was washed away, carried in rivulets down her face and hair. He looked different. He had aged in the months he had been away. While the changes that growing had carved into Radu’s face made her brother more beautiful, the changes in Mehmed’s made him look harder. Distant. Less like the crying boy she had met at the fountain, and more like what she felt a sultan should be.
But now, so close to her, the hard planes of his face softened into familiarity as he flashed the smile that had not changed since he was a boy. His lips were soft and full and welcoming, but his eyes were sly.
It was his lips she found herself unable to look away from.
“Did you miss me?” he teased.
Sincerity betrayed her, tumbling out of her mouth in a whisper before she could rein it in. “I did.”