The Day He Began to Want to Live
"You want to hurry things along? You're serious?"
Tamil said it while glaring at Hyperion the way one might stare down a beast in heat. Hyperion only looked back, shameless, as if he could not imagine what the trouble was.
"I knew you were impatient, but truly..."
Tamil grumbled on for quite some time before he went on. He and Gemma, he said, had been no better. The first time they lay together, both of them had been so tense that the whole affair was a disaster, and Gemma, badly shaken, had avoided him for two whole months.
Two months.
The moment Hyperion heard it, the ground seemed to drop away beneath him. He did his best to keep his composure, yet the instant he loosened his hold on himself, his wife's image rose unbidden.
It had happened often enough on the border that it was hardly remarkable. The trouble was that his imaginings had grown far more vivid.
Once, when Laniakea came to mind, what he saw was the two of them at a meal. They would sit a long way apart and eat in silence, and he had often found himself gazing blankly at that quiet, composed figure. He lived where screams rang all day and blood flew. Where he was, a meal was nothing but a necessity of survival, an act that held no other meaning. Chew dried meat just to stay alive while the screaming went on, and even the act of eating began to feel repulsive.
That was what a meal had been. With her, it was different. To sit in the quiet and slowly share a table someone had laid with care—aside from his earliest childhood, it was the first time in his life. The occasion had been painfully awkward, and yet Hyperion had not disliked it. No. In truth, he had enjoyed it. For the first time in a very long while, he had eaten not in order to survive, but for pleasure.
Perhaps that was why he had gotten carried away, certain that everything would go well. He recalled how Laniakea had looked the day before: not long out of her bath, her hair still damp, sitting there defenseless in nothing but a single thin garment.
However skilled Hyperion was at mastering himself, the memory made him ache below in an instant. At this rate, how was he any different from a beast in heat? And that day, Laniakea had even fainted.
He worried for her body. Even so, he thought that if they tried again, he truly could be careful—careful enough not to hurt her. But that was only what he thought. Gemma and Tamil had said they would decide once they had seen how she was.
"To be frank... Her Majesty the Empress may well find it frightening. And she wouldn't be able to say so, either."
At those words, Hyperion went rigid. He had been so caught up in his own excitement that he had never properly considered Laniakea's position.
One year. One heir.
He had pressed those terms upon her and kept her in the empress's place. Just as he had intended, a blend of pleading and quiet pressure had persuaded Laniakea to remain at his side, and that alone told him what she was. If a duty fell to Laniakea, she carried it through to the end. Their nights together must have been the same. She would have told herself it was her duty, and endured. He had said she should speak if it grew too hard, and still, to the very last...
When she came back to herself, looked at him, and finally broke into tears, Hyperion could not lift his head for the shame and the regret. It had not been enough to drag her to bed by pressing her to keep her promise. He had made it frightening, and he had made it painful.
And so he had caught the Ensi couple and asked them, almost begging. This was no time for dignity. He wanted Laniakea not to fear being with him—to want it. If that meant taking lessons in intimacy all over again at this late hour, what did it matter?
Even so, he still wanted to draw closer, and sooner. When he said as much, Tamil considered it a moment, then spoke.
"For today, begin with light conversation, so the sense of closeness can deepen. Then, when you truly believe Her Majesty has let go of her tension—"
"...When I believe that?"
Hyperion asked it back, his face grown every bit as grave as Tamil's.
"Tell her you wish to hold her hand. If Her Majesty hesitates in the slightest, you are not to ask for anything more."
"And if she doesn't hesitate?"
"Then simply go on holding it. Should Her Majesty ask why, tell her it is a stage of growing accustomed to touch. I'll say this in advance. This is not for the sake of Your Majesty's sordid desires. It is a step that genuinely must be taken, so kindly do not misunderstand."
"Sordid? What's sordid about it?"
Hyperion clicked his tongue as if to demand what sort of man Tamil took him for, though somewhere in a corner of his chest he felt a guilty twinge. Still, it was good. To be permitted to take her hand outright—that was no small thing.
But there was a mountain to cross before then. Again and again, Tamil stressed that if Laniakea hesitated even a little, Hyperion was not to come any closer. She had fainted on their first night. Her wariness of him would surely not have faded.
Just then, Gemma returned. Hearing what Tamil had impressed upon Hyperion, she clicked her tongue as though the whole thing were pitiful.
"The man who was so terrifying on the border—what on earth is this, now that he's come to the Imperial Palace?"
Gemma thought of Hyperion as he had been before the marriage.
If anything in the world was colder and harder than the ice wall of the north, Gemma had thought, it was Hyperion.
He had saved them, yes—but not because he possessed any warmth of heart, and not because he pitied them. He had merely uncovered a provincial lord's embezzlement, stopped in to confirm it, and rescued them along the way. Had the Ensi couple died, he would scarcely have been moved. He showed a little more feeling toward his knights, but he never crossed the line.
And no wonder. The north was a place where people died at the slightest provocation; to give one's heart too deeply would only make the suffering worse, and Gemma understood why Hyperion kept himself cold. Perhaps it was because he stood nearer to death than anyone, day after day. He seemed to have little attachment to living at all.
He always met the enemy at the foremost line and flung himself into their ranks without a thought for his own body. Even when treatment was offered, he stepped back and insisted he would be seen last. It was not courtesy. It was the bitter ennui of a man quietly waiting for death to be the end of him.
Gemma remembered with perfect clarity the day that Hyperion changed.
One day, a herald arrived from the Imperial Palace. Clad in the sort of glossy finery rarely seen in the north, he stepped down from his carriage, wrinkled his face for all to see, and covered his nose. At that open contempt, the knights surged with anger and seized their swords.
With those words, the herald flung the letter at Hyperion as if tossing it aside. A face that already looked like ill luck, and conduct to match—so the knights thought, watching Hyperion's expression.
He read the letter with a face that betrayed nothing, then nodded.
"Understood. I'll leave at once."
"Your Highness? What's happened?"
"They want me to get married."
"Whaaat?!"
The cry of astonishment rang so loud it seemed to shake the fortress itself. Marriage? Their own prince, married?
"They say I'm to draw up the contract first, so I'll go and come back. Hold the line yourselves for a while."
So saying, Hyperion brought his horse at once, ordered the herald to depart, and vanished with him.
Watching him recede, Gemma clicked her tongue to herself. She did not know the world of the highborn well, but she knew there was no such thing as love in marriages like theirs. And a match arranged by the Empress—how could that possibly be a proper match for Hyperion?
The young lady on the other end is pitiable, too.
As if even the time to prepare were too precious to waste, Hyperion left at once without so much as changing his clothes. Who could possibly grow fond of a man like that? And what did a handsome face matter, when the man himself was so frightening?
He isn't the sort to give his heart to anyone in the first place.
Watching him go, all of them wished for nothing more than that he return soon, and unharmed.
Some ten days later, Hyperion came back. But something was wrong.
"Your Highness? Are you all right?"
Ordinarily he would have ridden out to inspect the border the moment he returned. Instead he went into his quarters, sat down in a chair, and stared blankly at nothing but the mountains. Hyperion's knights were in an uproar. So was the Ensi couple.
"Did those palace bastards drug His Highness?"
"Darling, what are you standing there for? Bring every poison-test strip we have, this instant! We'll have His Highness bite them one by one!"
Never before had they seen Hyperion so dazed, and it was not mere blankness. At times he even lifted the corner of his mouth—and smiled. At that expression, Gemma and Tamil grew graver still. Had the palace used some drug meant to unravel his mind? But why now, of all times?
Fortunately, from the next day Hyperion was himself again. Yet a subtle change remained. The man who had always fought with his life laid on the line began to spare himself more than before. He guarded his body, and he chose the course more likely to let him survive.
And so the knights understood, and the Ensi couple with them. At last, he had begun to harbor an attachment to life.