“Before the defeat at Varna, they had been hostages, yes,” he told me. “But very well-treated ones. They were kept at Adrianople, the capital, were given food and clothing worthy of their station, were well educated and even received a good bit of freedom within the city itself. After the debacle, they were imprisoned in a filthy dungeon, beaten on a daily basis and half starved. It is a wonder they survived.”

“And your father couldn’t do anything? Pay a ransom or—”

“No. The Turks weren’t interested in money, not after Varna left all of Eastern Europe open to conquest—or so it looked at the time. They groomed Radu, who had proven to be the most malleable, to be a puppet prince for when they annexed Walachia. Vlad, who fought them at any and all opportunities, they mistreated terribly, but kept alive because his hatred for them paled in comparison to his loathing for their mutual enemy, Hunyadi.”

“Because he’d caused him to be imprisoned?”

“No.” Mircea got up abruptly. “Because Hunyadi murdered his entire family.”

I sat there blinking while Mircea disappeared onto the balcony. I wrapped the comforter around me and followed, a little hesitantly, because I wasn’t sure I was wanted. I found him lighting up a cigarette, one of the small, dark, spicy ones he preferred, which wasn’t a great sign. Mircea only smoked when he wanted to settle his nerves, or to give himself something to do with his hands besides wrapping them around someone’s neck.

But I guess that someone wasn’t me, because he pulled me back against him, adding his warmth to the comforter’s, making the otherwise frigid balcony almost cozy. It looked like this hotel was connected to a train station, because there were a ton of people coming and going far below, all looking like extras out of Dickens. Maybe A Christmas Carol, because a bunch were singing on the sidewalk in the middle of the mad rush. The songs drifted up to us in snippets, blown around on the breeze.

For a long time, Mircea smoked and I just enjoyed the feeling of those arms around me. I didn’t get it very often these days, with negotiations and Senate duties and the damned coronation taking up so much of his time. I laid my head back against his shoulder; it was always a surprise how good he felt.

“My father was livid with Hunyadi,” he finally told me, letting out a breath of sweet-scented smoke that drifted up, ghostly pale against the blackness. “He had warned the man, had almost begged him not to go, and now fifteen thousand good men were dead, his sons were imperiled and nothing had been gained. If anything, the crusade had only served to show the Ottomans our weakness, and he knew them well enough to know they wouldn’t hesitate to exploit it.”

“What did he do?”

Mircea shrugged, a liquid movement against my back. “What he should have done. He imprisoned him when the man passed through Walachia, intending that he should answer for his crimes. But Hunyadi had powerful friends, and they immediately began petitioning my father to release him.”

“And did he?”

Mircea was quiet for a moment, but his arms tightened around me almost imperceptibly. “They called me Mircea the Bold then,” he said quietly. “Due to my actions in battle. But I was too bold on that occasion. Furious and grieving, and still in pain from wounds received at that disaster of a crusade, I was rash. I spoke out in open court, told how I had seen Hunyadi’s arrogance firsthand, that I knew his ego and ambition would drive him to find a scapegoat for his failure. He could hardly blame the martyred king or the saintly cardinal, leaving us as the obvious targets. I begged my father to kill him, warned that if it was not his head on the chopping block, it would be ours.”

“And did he listen?’

“No. But someone else did. I don’t know—I never knew—who told Hunyadi. But somehow, my words reached his ears. And after my father bowed to pressure and released him, Hunyadi vowed to do precisely as I had said: to see us all dead. He put together a force and attacked us—his former allies—barely three years later. My family was forced to flee for our lives, but it did little good. Boyars—the local nobility—in his pay hunted us down. It was about this time of year when they caught up with us.”

It was a little incongruous, standing there warm and safe, listening to Christmas carols and smelling the cold, crisp air and Mircea’s funky little cigarette. And imagining the horror he must have felt. “They killed . . . everyone?”

“Everyone they could reach. They slit my mother’s throat, tortured my father and buried me alive. It is ironic, but the only thing that saved my brothers was being in Turkish hands. They were far safer in Adrianople than they would have been at home in their own beds.”

I turned to look at him. “Why did you tell me this?”

Cold hands slid inside the coat, caressed my bare flesh, made me shiver. “So that you would understand. I caused the deaths of my entire family once—”

“You didn’t!”

“Shh.” His hands curved around my waist, then dropped to settle on his favorite spot—my bare ass. “I have had five hundred years to come to terms with what I did. I was young and hotheaded and foolish, and Hunyadi might have done the same even had I said nothing. I will never know. What I do know, what I learned from that one tragic mistake, was never again to risk the ones I love.”

I looked up at him to find the dark hair dusted with snow. It clung to his high, arched brows, trembled on his lashes. “You love me?”

He just looked at me for a moment. And then he reared back his head and laughed, a rich, mellow sound, unreserved and unashamed. “No, not at all. I regularly battle gods for women I dislike!”

I just stood there, snow melting on my cheeks like tears.

“What is it?” he asked, after a moment.

“I—Nothing.” Except that no one had ever said that to me before. Not Eugenie, not even Rafe. They had acted like it, had shown it in a lot of little ways, but no one had ever said it.

No one at all.

Mircea pulled me against him, and I laid my head on his chest.

He was silent for a moment. “I have had . . . difficulty . . . with this season, ever since.”

“Perhaps you need a good memory in place of the bad ones.”

A corner of his lips quirked. “And where would I obtain such a thing?”

I buried my head in his chest. “I think we can figure something out.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

“You brought that thing?” I asked the next morning, sitting up in bed. I was looking at a battered old suitcase with a burn scar on its bum that was hovering near the foot of the bed.

“I could hardly leave it, dulceață,” Mircea said, pouring coffee at a little table by the window. “The charm still works.”

“Sort of.” It was drooping like a week-old bouquet or a half-deflated balloon. I pushed it with a finger, and it bobbed a little in the air, giving off a nasty smell. I wrinkled my nose, wrapped a sheet around myself and went to see what was for breakfast.

Watery sunlight was leaking in through the glass, gleaming off white china and solid silver, and a wire basket that was leaking mouthwatering smells. Fresh scones. Yum.

Mircea handed me a cup of coffee. “And I thought you might want to keep it, as it belonged to your mother.”

“What, the suitcase?”

He nodded.

I shook my head, mouth full of scone. “It was the mage’s.”

Mircea raised a dark brow. “Not unless he used her perfume.”

I swallowed and pulled the little case over. I didn’t smell anything but charred leather and smoke, but I trusted Mircea’s nose. And sure enough, there was a pile of lingerie and a few obviously female outfits inside. A pair of shoes a size too big for me. And tucked into a pocket along the side, a bunch of old letters.

“But . . . how would she have had time to pack?” I asked, sorting through them. “It’s not like she knew she was being kidnapped!”

“If that was, in fact, what we saw.”

I looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Dulceață, I have seen many people under a compulsion, and without fail, they are blanks. Almost robotic in their movements, their speech . . . they do not make decisions; they wait for orders. And they do not tell their captors to hush.”

“You’re saying . . . she went with him on purpose?”

“It would seem the only answer.”

“But . . . why? How would she even know someone like that? She was the Pythian heir!”

“Perhaps the letters will tell you.”

I shook my head, opening one after another. “No. These were all written by my father. It looks like he’d been writing to her for a while and she’d kept them. . . .” I frowned. “But that doesn’t make sense, either. Jonas said that my parents barely knew each other a week before they ran away together. And these . . .” I checked a few more. “They go back more than a decade.”

Mircea hesitated. I wouldn’t have noticed, but I was looking right at him. And he definitely started to say something and then stopped.

“What?” I demanded.

“I could be wrong,” he said carefully. “It has been many years, and I had no reason to pay particular attention at the time—”

“Attention to what?”

“To your father’s individual scent.”

I frowned harder. “What does that have—”

“I did not notice it at the party. Things were too fraught and there were too many other scents in the vicinity. But last night, when I was standing by the mage, I thought I recognized—”

“No.” I looked at him in horror.

“—the same tobacco, the same cologne, the same brand of hair pomade—”

“No!”

That damned eyebrow went up again. I was starting to hate that thing. “Would you prefer to have been sired by a dangerous dark mage?”

“Yes! If the alternative is . . . is him. He was—”