A Week of Absolute Rest
The next day, Laniakea was laid up in bed. She had spent the whole of the previous day strung tight with tension, and her body had simply given out.
It was nothing grave, or so they said, yet a low fever had risen and the strength had gone out of her limbs.
"Even so, I think I could still work."
At her murmur, Hyperion answered with flat finality.
"Don't be absurd."
Gemma, who had come running the moment she was summoned, said much the same.
"Quite apart from yesterday, the fatigue that has been accumulating ever since Your Majesty took up the Empress's duties has surged in all at once and broken."
Her expression grew graver still.
"If you do not rest properly now, you are likely to keep falling ill. You must rest thoroughly."
At the physician's verdict, Hyperion spoke at once.
"A week of rest, then. After that we will look at your condition again and decide."
"A week? That's ridiculous. How could I possibly rest for that long—ah!"
She started to bolt upright to protest, and Hyperion set a single finger lightly against her brow. That alone was enough. Laniakea dropped back onto the bed with a thud.
Bewildered at how easily she had collapsed, she tried to rise again.
But—
Press.
The moment his finger settled on her brow once more, she sank back exactly as before.
"Ngh!"
Each time she tried to get up, she was pressed straight back down. Only after several more attempts did she finally abandon the effort.
"Then please rest well, Your Majesty. I will bring a tonic to restore your strength after your meal."
Gemma withdrew with a soft, genteel laugh, and Hyperion came to stand at Laniakea's side with his arms folded.
"You cannot even sit up, and you mean to tell me you are fine?"
"I'm not that sick...!"
"Enough. For now, rest as Gemma said. The ladies-in-waiting will see to anything urgent at the Empress's Palace. And..."
The gentleness that had been on his face a moment before went cold.
"I will finish every matter connected with the attack myself. I will also track down every piece of information you set loose among the ministers."
Laniakea considered that for a moment, then looked up at him.
"Then would it be all right if I at least wrote up the ministers' reactions from yesterday?"
"I won't forbid you that much."
He seemed to have realized that if he denied her even that, she would be on her feet again, and so he yielded so far.
"In any case, you really must rest. I will return tonight."
I will return. At those words, Laniakea glanced around her.
On an ordinary morning she ought to have gone back to the Empress's Palace. But the low fever she had felt upon waking had left her lying here in the Main Palace instead.
"Wouldn't it still be better if I returned to the Empress's Palace?"
"Is the Main Palace uncomfortable?"
"..."
Laniakea avoided the question.
True to its name, the Main Palace was a building whose splendor rivaled the Empress's Palace and whose grandeur surpassed it. The staff who served here were every bit as capable as those of the Empress's Palace and the Emperor's Palace, and some families had worked in the Main Palace for generations, so the work was carried out with an even cleaner, more flawless precision.
It had been built from the first for the imperial couple. It ought to have been comfortable. And yet...
Looking around the room, Laniakea felt a flush of embarrassment she could not quite justify.
She had come here only a handful of times, and she came to spend the night with him. Being in this room made everything they had done together rise unbidden.
The first night, which had been a complete disaster; the way they had gone on kissing after that; the way he had licked and bitten his way over her whole body. And yesterday...
I even went and had that strange dream.
When she opened her eyes that morning, an unfamiliar scene had flickered through her mind.
Hyperion, gripping himself, moving his hand in a slow, deliberate stroke.
Rough breaths broke from him at uneven intervals, and each time he rubbed the slick flesh there came a wet, rhythmic sound.
What he held was blurred, and yet it was absurdly thick and long—so much so that it hardly seemed real.
Was it only because it was a dream? It was far too big.
She had seen it with her own eyes, and it had been large then too, but strangely, in the dream, it had looked even larger.
That was not the point. What kept returning to her was his face—the low groan slipping from him as he pleasured himself alone, his hand closed around himself.
A dream ought to fade with time, the way dreams do.
Yet the moment she woke and saw his face, it did not blur at all. If anything, it grew sharper.
Worse still was the fact that she could not stop recalling it.
She had read of such things in books, but she had never known precisely how a man did it. She had never seen it. Of course she hadn't.
Then why did I dream it? Have I been with Hyperion so much lately that my mind just started inventing things on its own? Have I been harboring this kind of wantonness all along?
No—more than that, I fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Why would I dream something like that?
"Laniakea?"
When she gave no answer, Hyperion drew nearer, worry plain on his face.
He came close enough that their faces nearly touched, and still she did not draw back.
This much had always been—
Oh?
Looking at him so near, Laniakea understood something.
Even when he approached without warning, she was no longer startled at all.
He leaned in and pressed a light kiss to her brow as she sat there, dazed.
"Whatever else, a week of absolute rest. I will be going."
With that he turned away, as if reluctant to leave, and added,
"If someone else comes in, ask them to press your forehead."
"What?"
He had no intention of explaining. Smiling, he left the room. Not long after, Hilde came in.
"Good timing, Hilde. I have a favor to ask..."
"Physician Gemma has already drilled it into me that I am absolutely not to bring you any work. His Majesty repeated the order on his way out as well."
"No, not that. Would you press my forehead with your finger?"
"Pardon?"
Bewildered by a request so far from anything she had expected, Hilde came closer all the same and set a finger to Laniakea's brow.
"Do you mean like this, Your Majesty?"
"Yes. When I try to get up, press."
Her eyes asked why on earth she was being made to do such a thing, but loyal as she was, Hilde did as she was told.
Thud.
Watching her body give way and drop back down far too easily once again, Laniakea understood at last.
It had not been Hyperion's strength that kept her from rising. Anyone's finger on her brow, at the moment she tried to sit up, would drop her straight back down.
"I've been had..."
She muttered it, thoroughly wronged, but Hyperion was already long gone.
At that same hour, the Empress's Palace was enjoying a rare stretch of leisure.
Word had come that, after yesterday's events, the Empress would be resting in the Main Palace for the time being. Hilde was with her there now.
"So this morning, we get to rest a little as well."
The maids poured tea into large cups, gathered in twos and threes, and fell to talking.
Laniakea and Hilde were not the sort of superiors who ruled them with a strict hand, but even so, one could not entirely stop minding oneself around them.
"I can't even remember what state of mind carried me through yesterday."
"I know. I was so startled... and yet Her Majesty wasn't nearly as shaken as one would have expected, was she?"
"And His Majesty came back without a scratch. They say the knights dragged the attacker away... was it even an attack?"
The man had been hauled off quietly, with no one there to see, and the imperial couple themselves had said nothing of it. While the maids were trading the suspicion that yesterday's affair might not have been so slight a matter after all, one of them spoke as if something had just occurred to her.
"Come to think of it, Lady Hilde was impressive yesterday, but so was Chelsia. Wasn't she?"
"Hm?"
Chelsia, who had been looking over documents, lifted her head in confusion at the sudden sound of her own name. Another maid beside her chimed in at once.
"She's right. Even on ordinary days, watching her work, I always thought she was remarkably sharp—and yesterday she didn't fluster for a moment. She carried out Her Majesty's orders at once."
"Exactly. Her Majesty did make Lady Hilde chief lady-in-waiting, but there's a reason she calls on Chelsia so often too. Honestly, when it comes to handling the work, I don't think Chelsia falls behind in the least."
"That's right."
Chelsia had no idea how to answer the praise suddenly pouring over her.
In truth, until a moment ago she had been rather downcast. Before coming to the Imperial Palace that morning, she had heard from the elders' council of her house that her ability was in doubt.