Meyna stood at a long table in the open room at the center of the second floor. Her hands were covered in black soil. On the table, little semi-sentient orb-blood plants squiggled in the piles of dirt. Meyna brought up a hatchet and severed the red cylindrical head from the stem of one of the plants, then tossed both pieces into a foaming bucket of salt water at her feet. Ahkio had seen her cull the plants before but recognized this as something different. She was murdering all of them.

Meyna glanced up at him, hatchet raised, fingers clasping another wriggling plant. “I wondered how long you’d be,” she said, and brought down the hatchet.

“I hoped you’d still be here. I sent you letters. Did you get them?”

“The Soarina sisters are coming for the plates and Rhin’s unsold ceramics,” Meyna said. “You’d be surprised how much Afara Soarina wants them now that they come so cheaply. But the plants… well, no one wants the plants.”

“The letters, Meyna?”

She laughed. The laugh grew louder and deeper, until she doubled over, clutching her belly. She had to set down the hatchet. “Marry you?” she gasped. “After what you just did?”

Despite the hatchet in her hand, he wanted to hold her. He wondered if he was mad for feeling it. But this woman had held him and comforted him. She’d welcomed him into her home, made love to him, done everything but marry him.

“If you’d just answered-”

“You don’t love me or my husbands. You love power,” she said. She held up one of the wriggling plants. “Do you want one? I have thirty, and thirty more after that. Not much use for them where we’re going. They breed like flies in the woodlands. Beautiful but troublesome little things, liable to bite off a hand at maturity. But so sweet before they become deadly.”

“They killed my sister, Meyna.”

“You know that isn’t true. Is that what Ora Nasaka told you?”

“Yisaoh was seen in the temple–”

She lay down the hatchet. Leaned toward him. Her face softened. “It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said. “Come with us, Ahkio. Ora Nasaka is turning you into something horrible. I do want to marry you, Ahkio, but I don’t want some Ora’s puppet. Give your title to some other scheming madwoman.”

Ahkio’s heart raced. How long had he waited to hear her propose? Years. The dying plants wriggled on the table. He saw her hand covered in their sap. She knew what he wanted. She had always known. She offered it now because she’d run out of options. The more Dhai talked of love, the more all he could see was politics.

“It’s too late for that, Meyna.”