I briefly closed my eyes. “Lasania was never mine.”
“That’s not true. You should’ve been Queen, Sera. Not me. If I can acknowledge that, you should be able to.”
Curling my fingers around my knees, I said, “But you are Queen, and that’s what matters now. You’ll be able to handle what I’m about to tell you, unlike my—” I cut myself off, took a moment, then continued. “The Rot was caused by something else entirely. Something much more complicated than a deal.”
Ezra was quiet for a moment. “And whatever it is, you cannot tell me?”
“No,” I said quietly.
“Then…” Her shoulders stiffened. “Then there is no stopping the Rot?”
“We’re going to do our damnedest to stop it. I swear,” I promised. “But nothing is guaranteed. There is a chance—”
“Barely,” Nyktos growled.
“A small chance,” I amended, “that we could fail. That’s why I came today. I wanted to warn you so you could prepare.” I thought about what Holland had told me and the people outside with their baskets and bushels. “But I think you’ve already begun to do that.”
“Yes. I have,” she said, her grip easing on the arm of the chair. “You know how I’ve felt about how the Rot was handled. I felt that we should be doing everything we could to build the pantries of the people, not just our own.”
“The people we saw on the way in?” Nyktos said, asking his first non-antagonistic question.
“We’ve started a bit of a food bank where people can come on certain days, at certain times, if they have need,” she explained. “I’ve also been in talks with the King and Queen of Terra, in hopes of strengthening their faith in Lasania. I believe I am being successful in such talks.” A small smile appeared. “I believe we simply needed to prove that an alliance with us is beneficial. Something my father, gods rest his soul, was never that great in relaying.”
I managed to fight back a cringe. Ezra loved her father, and I… My stare shifted to what would’ve been his throne.
“And how are you succeeding at that?” Nyktos asked.
I sucked in a soft breath, blinking. I didn’t think Nyktos was all that curious about what Ezra was doing. He might have simply been preventing me from blurting out what I’d caused.
Which I likely would have.
And Ezra didn’t need to know that.
“They have many fertile fields primed for crops, unlike us,” she said. “But we have one thing in abundance that Terra does not. Labor. Paid labor, involving those who wish to relocate to Terra—at least for part of the year. Our talks are going well.”
That was very smart.
“But if the Rot continues to spread…” She trailed off.
I nodded. “Has it spread?”
“A bit more. We’ve lost a few more farms, but it hasn’t sped up or anything like that,” she confirmed. I thought of the Masseys, knowing that their farm had to be one of those lost. “It is good to know this—what you’ve shared. It gives me, well, I don’t know how else to say it, but it gives me hope.”
My brows rose. “You didn’t think I’d succeed at killing him?”
“I wasn’t quite sure you’d succeed at the whole making-him-fall-in-love part,” she corrected.
“Wow,” I muttered.
“You are a bit…temperamental. And those around you do have a tendency to end up stabbed,” she began with a sheepish grin. “I figured you’d probably get yourself killed by growing impatient and just stabbing him.”
Nyktos barked out a short laugh. “Now,thatwas incredibly astute.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
Ezra opened her mouth, closed it, and then appeared to try again. “I am very…confused by you.”
Nyktos stared down at her. “You are?”