The Contract's Last Clause
"Your Highness? The First Prince?"
Laniakea looked at the man who had called to her, feeling strangely unmoored.
Before she ever set foot in the Empire, she had heard more than enough about the First Prince. Her sisters had gone on at length about how little footing he had there, how coldly he was treated, what a powerless prince he was. And all the way here, the maid the Empress had sent never once stopped talking about how blunt he was, how cold, how wholly without affection. Not that the maid had put it quite so plainly.
"His Highness the First Prince is... well. His presence is rather overwhelming. The other members of the imperial family find him difficult to face."
Even as she said it, a pity she had not quite managed to hide lingered on her face when she looked at Laniakea. From the maid's manner alone, Laniakea had finished bracing herself for the man who was to be her husband.
So he has no power, he's terrifying, and his temper is foul. That's the shape of it.
By rights the succession ought to have gone to the eldest son, and the Empress had taken every piece of it from him. There was no reason he should feel kindly toward a wife she had chosen and forced on him.
That was what Laniakea had believed. Then their eyes met, and she knew at once that she had been wrong.
He doesn't seem to dislike me nearly as much as I thought he would.
She had expected wariness in that gaze, or outright loathing. Hyperion's eyes held neither. They were simply still, and that unsettled her all the more.
People seeing her for the first time—men, especially—startled, and then they smiled. Laniakea hated those smiles. Past them she could always feel their contempt for her, and a baser hunger besides. Hyperion did neither. He was not startled, and he did not smile. He only looked at her, calm and unreadable.
Perhaps he decided the look had been improper. A moment later he drew his gaze away, crossed to his own place, and sat. Then, as if the single sentence he had already spoken were greeting enough, he began to read the contract laid out before him without another word.
Laniakea pressed a hand to the heart still hammering in her chest and watched him turn the pages.
She had assumed the maid's account was thick with exaggeration. Sitting across from him now, she saw that it was not.
He's enormous.
This was a prince said to have lived in a monastery from childhood. Life there, she had heard, bordered on penance, with food restricted to the extreme, until everyone who endured it grew thin. The First Prince before her had the build of a man who had spent his life as a knight. He was tall, and his frame was massive, and yet he did not look slow. It was the spareness of him, she thought—the disciplined bearing, without a single wasted motion.
He was only sitting across from her, and still she could not move. It felt as if a statue of some war god out of the old myths had stepped down and begun to breathe. Simply looking at him was enough to be overwhelmed. Laniakea caught her trembling hands and pressed them still, then stole another glance. Once the shock had ebbed a little, his face came into focus at last, and she was startled all over again.
He's handsome?
The face she had only managed to look at after enduring that crushing pressure was handsome to an absurd degree. In truth, her own family had left her numb to ordinary beauty. She could look at the young heir of the handsomest noble house in Priatra and think nothing more than that he was pleasant enough.
The lines are strong... solid, I suppose that's the word.
He was nothing like the young lords she had seen before, and perhaps for that very reason his looks struck her all the harder, as if someone had taken steel and carved it into the shape of a man.
But the surprise ended there. Watching him turn the pages of the contract with that same impassive face, even the shock of a moment ago settled quietly down. Husband or not, he was someone she would likely seldom see.
And I won't want to see him, either.
Twice a year, perhaps three, if she saw him often.
She was thinking as much, her eyes still on him, when she noticed a stain spattered across one side of his clothes. She leaned in to look more closely—
"Is something the matter?"
He had caught her gaze. He lifted his head and looked at her.
"Ah, it's only... there's a stain, and I wondered what it was..."
"Ah."
At her words the First Prince glanced down at his clothes, clicked his tongue low, and said, "I only had time to wash my face before I came. I never checked whether the clothes were clean. Forgive me."
All at once she had the look of someone who had called a prince out for his discourtesy. Laniakea shook her head at once.
"No, not at all! Of course that can happen. You needn't have hurried..."
"I was charged with a great many tasks and ran short of time, so in rushing I was rude. Once this is finished, I must go straight back."
He inclined his head slightly, as if grateful she understood, and returned his eyes to the contract.
Silence settled between them again, and Laniakea turned over what he had just said.
Straight back?
So this was what it meant, that he scarcely stayed in the Imperial Palace.
They said he remains mostly on the Northern Border.
When she first heard it, she had wondered whether the Empress was sending him to a place like that on purpose, hoping he would die. Looking at him now, it seemed simpler. They sent him because they needed him there.
Well. The Empress probably has no particular need to kill him.
He was a First Prince long since shoved aside in the war of succession. There was no point in killing a man who posed no threat, and if he died, the fact of it might well turn against the Empress.
Which is why she makes a show of stepping in to arrange even his marriage.
To outside eyes, there was nothing to fault in a match between Laniakea and the First Prince. They had brought not some minor noblewoman, but a princess of another kingdom, and the pairing was pleasing to look at besides. It was a marriage the Empress could hold up as proof that she tended even the First Prince—who was not her own child—with careful, solicitous care.
In any case, that's a relief.
If he did not come, Laniakea would be that much freer. Before she left for the Empire, she had tried to imagine what this married life would be. If she saw her husband only a few times a year, she would have no need to throw herself into society. The Empress would not want that, and Laniakea could shut herself away in her residence for as long as she liked. Others might call such a life pitiable. She had wanted it: a life in which no one paid her any mind, and she need pay no mind to anyone else.
Between the Empress's manner and the First Prince's, that life now seemed as good as certain.
Just then Hyperion, who had been reading the contract all this while, raised his head.
"I've finished reviewing the first part. There is nothing further I wish to amend. Is there anything Your Highness would like changed?"
There couldn't be. Ask for a change, and the Empress's eyes would narrow at once.
"No. Nothing."
"Very well. Then once we settle the final page, the drafting will be done."
He said it as he opened the contract to its last page, and Laniakea hurried to find the same place in her own copy. From here the terms concerned private matters between Hyperion and Laniakea, and required their agreement. The first clause addressed their meals.
The two parties shall dine together ________ times every ________.
Meals shall be reckoned according to the ________ meal.
"Would once a year be acceptable? There is a great deal of duty on the Northern Border, and in honesty I doubt I could keep to anything more."
A husband and wife who shared a meal once a year. Was that not a greater distance than strangers? Even as she thought it, Laniakea smiled.
"Of course."
She added what a minister had told her on the way.
"I was told we needn't set down every term right now. Later, by mutual agreement, the contract can still be amended. I'll match Your Highness's wishes as far as I can."
They would not see each other often, but there was no need to set herself against the prince. She had come on the Empress's order. It would serve her better, going forward, to make plain that she did not mean to be a bother to him either.
Perhaps that intention reached him. He nodded, as if he understood.
"Then would it also be all right to leave the final clause for later discussion?"
She had not yet looked at the last clause, but it was plain the First Prince found the whole business a considerable nuisance. Otherwise he would never have skimmed the contract so carelessly.
Still, wouldn't it be better to settle a little more of it now?
Thinking so, Laniakea looked at the next clause.
The two parties shall share a bed for the begetting of an heir ________ times every ________.
Laniakea blinked once, then answered.
"Yes. Let's conclude the negotiations with that."