A few days after the attack, Lada was strong enough to join Mehmed in his study to go over the restructuring. Radu was already there. He looked haunted, moving too quickly through the outer rooms, eyes fixed ahead.
Lada remembered the hillside forest she could no longer enter in Amasya and felt pity for Radu. She was about to suggest they move to the gardens when they were surprised by the arrival of a eunuch escorting Halima.
“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.