The Mark Beneath Her Collar
The morning sun had risen, and the staff of the Empress's Palace moved in quiet, swift order.
The bewildered faces of the handful of maids left behind after their mistress changed so suddenly were nowhere to be seen. With the newly appointed chief lady-in-waiting and head maid at their center, they were shaping a fresh set of rules—never straying far from long-standing imperial etiquette, yet boldly discarding whatever among the former empress's ways had been nothing but a nuisance.
Doing away with inherited custom was no easy thing. One false step, and they might be seized upon and branded ignorant and rude. Even so, the people now within the Empress's Palace were remaking their order without hesitation, sweeping out the old and setting the new in its place.
Their reason was simple.
Because Her Majesty the Empress declared her full and unconditional support.
They could not forget the sight of her telling them not to worry—to do as they wished.
"You are here because you have the ability for it. If you did not, would each department have recommended you to me so readily?"
The Empress had smiled with gentle warmth and placed the work in their hands at once.
And so everyone who had come to serve in the Empress's Palace was left utterly bewildered. They had braced themselves for her to doubt their competence and put them to the test. The former empress, after all, had been notorious for the severity with which she tried every newcomer. The moment they set to work, she found fault in every trifle, shamed them before the others, and pared a person's pride down without mercy. Small wonder a saying had gone around: step into the Empress's Palace, and you would weep three times before you even began.
They were talents each department had sifted and chosen with care, and yet every time they crossed that threshold they shuddered as if walking into a monster's maw, wearing the look of people for whom the world had already ended. Among them were those who could not endure the pressure and ended their own lives. The former empress had been pleased by it. She had wanted everyone within those walls to be made small, and to bow before the weight of her majesty.
In such an atmosphere, no one dared voice a good thought or a useful opinion, however clearly they held it. In that place, the most important task of all had been simply not to fall from the empress's favor.
The new Empress was nothing like her.
Those who had watched at first, wondering whether the kindness was real, were now sorting through the accumulated papers without a trace of hesitation, already preparing to find what might be improved and report it.
"Don't take on too heavy a burden. Go slowly, and speak to me once you're ready to explain. Don't rush, and don't grow anxious. See that you return home on time as well."
She did not hound them for results, and she even worried, in her own person, over the hour they left their posts. Set beside the former empress, that humane and considerate manner only deepened the palace's fondness for the Empress who now reigned. And so the Empress's Palace, though its new mistress had been among them only a little while, brimmed with a youthful vigor no one there had seen in decades.
Even amid that bustle, the Empress's office kept a measured quiet.
The maids at their work let their eyes drift, as they did every day, to the vase upon the desk. A flower different from yesterday's stood in it—divided, of course, from the fresh bouquet the Emperor had sent again that morning. The blooms were fragrant and vivid, scarcely any time passed since they had been cut, and looking at them, every maid could guess the same thing: the affection and fidelity the Emperor sent the Empress ran far deeper than any of them had imagined.
From the flowers, their gazes slipped naturally aside. In the highest seat of the office sat the mistress of those flowers.
They had seen the Empress hundreds of times, thousands, and still, each time they turned their heads, they had to swallow the sigh of admiration that rose unbidden. So this was a royal of Priatra, with the Fairy Bloodline in her veins. Beneath the sunlight falling through the window, platinum hair braided over one shoulder glittered, beautiful as light on water. Seated there as if she alone were shining, Laniakea was the very forest fairy people pictured when they spoke of such things. If she differed from a fairy at all, it was only in this: a pen rested in one hand, and she was studying the documents before her with a profoundly serious face.
Yet a faint, unhidden weariness lay over her features, the look of someone met by the languor that gathers on a warm spring afternoon.
The glances that had admired her slipped, for a moment, below that face. The day was not cold, and still the Empress wore a gown that covered her throat. The instant she shifted, her nape was briefly bared—and everyone at work saw it. A deep red mark remained upon the Empress's nape.
There was no pressing business today. That mark explained to all of them, better than words, why she looked so tired.
The maids flushed and turned their eyes back to the papers. What rose in their minds was the Emperor as they had glimpsed him in passing through the Imperial Palace, and the rumors that moved through those halls.
Everyone said he was a terribly cold man.
As a child he had lived in a monastery; once grown, on the Northern Border. Perhaps because of it, the new Emperor almost never showed what he felt, and was said to be so taciturn that not even a jest could find its way through. Every department of the palace, they said, stood tense and trembling before him. Certain that a man made emperor so suddenly must be ignorant of a great deal, the ministers had gone in to audience puffed up with the conviction that it fell to them to instruct him. And then, long afterward, it was no longer any secret that they had come out again with reddened eyes, as if they had been swallowing tears.
An emperor who could strike fear even into seasoned ministers—and yet that same man went to the Main Palace on every appointed day without fail, and took the Empress into his arms. And every day, like a man confessing his love, he sent great armfuls of fresh flowers.
Is His Majesty cold to everyone, and warm only to my Empress?
Somehow the maids' faces grew redder still.
Unaware of what they were thinking, Laniakea rolled the blameless pen back and forth in her hand.
I could die of embarrassment.
She was pretending, with everything she had, not to notice—but she had realized long ago that the maids' eyes kept flicking toward her neck. When she woke and was attended at her bath, the sight of the marks left there had sent heat rushing to her own face. Even so, it was a mercy that only her neck was visible.
Below the neck, it was far worse.
Laniakea set the pen down and smoothed a hand over her chest. A light pressure brought a sensation she could not quite name—ticklish, or aching. No wonder, when the skin there was covered in mottled marks. Still tracing her chest, she swallowed a small sigh. It was no illusion of hers that a heat not yet cooled breathed out with it.
Why do I remember all of it?
Hyperion had driven her with a thoroughness that deserved to be called relentless. He had bitten her ear, stroked her nape, and caught her hands in his. There had been none of the direct coupling people imagined, and yet Laniakea had ended more exhausted than on their first night. She had lost count of how many times, gasping as her breath reached its limit, wetness had spilled from her. And each time, as if he knew the whole state of her body, Hyperion had stroked her belly in a slow, unhurried hand. Meeting her peak alone again and again, Laniakea had drifted into sleep beneath him.
When she opened her eyes once more, he was not beside her, just as before. What had changed was that, unlike last time, the place next to her still held the trace of how long he had remained. She learned later that Hyperion had returned in the morning. For at least a few hours after she fell asleep, he had stayed with her.
Eating breakfast alone in the Main Palace, Laniakea had felt a disappointment she could not name. Only when she left the Main Palace and returned to the Empress's Palace did she understand the reason for it.
I wish we had eaten together.
Meals with him had once been awkward. Now, she thought, they would be all right. So perhaps they might share them.
Her hand drifted over her chest again, and Laniakea thought of what the Ensi couple had taught them about what was still to come. Holding hands, being touched—such things no longer unsettled her. They had tried only twice, and yet, thanks to Hyperion, who had not left her side for even a moment through those hours, she had grown used to him far sooner than the Ensis had expected.
When Gemma realized as much, she seemed to consider for a moment, then said to Laniakea:
"Then... shall we try going a little deeper next time?"
She had not even been able to ask what going deeper meant. What was certain was that the next time, too, would be difficult and exhausting. And yet it was never unpleasant.
Laniakea raised a nail and scratched the back of her hand. The red mark that had been fading was carved deep into the same place again last night. Hyperion had surely made it anew.
What on earth is he going to do next time?
She would find out when it came, but already she could not stop thinking of it.
Just then the head maid brought tea. Hilde rose to receive it, set everything in order upon the table, and came to Laniakea.
"Your Majesty, these are the candidates for the banquet tea I mentioned this morning."
At Hilde's words, Laniakea rose from her seat. It was called the tea for the banquet, but from now on it would be served after meals not only in the Empress's Palace, but in the Main Palace and the Emperor's Palace as well. It had to be chosen with care. Looking at the dozen or so teas laid out on the table, Laniakea's expression hardened.
This was no simple matter of selecting whichever had a pleasant fragrance and a pleasing taste.