She Slept Without Fear
He drew as close to Laniakea's side as care would allow. Listening to her breath, deep as any sleeper's, he doubted there was any need to be so cautious at all.
Even so, he could not bear the thought of his presence troubling her rest.
Hyperion sat down right beside her, and Laniakea showed not the faintest sign of waking. That let him look his fill at the woman asleep before him.
He had sent her off well fed not long ago, and already the marks of exhaustion lay stark beneath her eyes. At this rate, he worried he would find his wife at the banquet looking thoroughly raccoon-eyed.
That would be rather cute, though.
The brief imagining softened the line of his eyes. Whatever she did, his wife would be beautiful, and lovely, and dear.
And so—
Hyperion bent over her until the breath she let out brushed his face. After a moment's hesitation he lowered himself a little farther, and his lips touched the forehead laid bare before him.
"Mmm..."
The touch brought Laniakea's eyes slowly open. Anyone else, finding a person that close, might have startled awake in fright, yet her blinking, unfocused gaze only rested on him for a moment. Recognition seemed to sharpen it briefly.
Then her eyes slid shut again, as easily as if there were nothing amiss in his being there at all.
At the sight, Hyperion felt his heart slam hard against his ribs.
Once, merely sharing a room with him had been enough to frighten Laniakea. Her fear had been unavoidable. Hyperion knew perfectly well how threatening his height, his bulk, and the blank expression he wore without thinking could seem to another. With her, at least, he tried not to let that side of him show. Had he not grown sick of watching every noble he met in the Imperial Palace shrink from him in fear and discomfort whenever he returned?
And so, after he ruined their first night, Hyperion had sunk into dejection.
The Enshi couple had said to him then:
"If you see each other often, Her Majesty the Empress will grow used to you as well. Probably...?"
The way the couple let the words trail off had only made him more anxious. What was he to do if his wife went on fearing him forever?
But looking at her now, that worry vanished without a trace. Far from tensing in his presence, she sank back into deep sleep as if to say that with him, there was no trouble at all. It was proof of how thoroughly she trusted him.
Hyperion lay down beside her and settled Laniakea's head upon his arm. Perhaps the height was just right. Her face looked far more at ease than when she had simply been lying on the bed, and then she squirmed and burrowed into his embrace.
His hand rose to draw her shoulder in, groped at empty air, and fell again.
He wanted to hold her just like this. Had he not ridden the whole way here with nothing else on his mind?
The last time he had fallen asleep in this room, he had given all his heat and devotion to easing her tense body. He had caressed her without pause, pressed himself into her wetness, and stroked the clenched inner walls. He had not rushed. Making her comfortable was, at every step, a joy to him, and a provocation, and a pleasure beyond anything else.
Fortunately Laniakea had met his efforts, and by the time dawn drew near the place between her legs was soaked enough to take not only his fingers, but something larger as well. He had not entered her, though. She was already too exhausted for that.
So today he had thought that even if he could not drive all the way in at a single stroke, he might at least let the tip be taken—
With his other hand, Hyperion swept back the hair that had fallen across her forehead.
Strange. Until he arrived, his head had been full of nothing but the thought of devouring her until dawn, and the moment he saw her face, worn out and asleep, that desire vanished in an instant.
She had fallen asleep from exhaustion. He had not the slightest intention of forcing such a person awake so that he might hold her. All he wanted was for her to sleep even a little more comfortably, and yet the wish to touch her would not be held down, and so he remained as he was.
When he brushed the fallen hair back, Laniakea opened her eyes again, as if the motion had woken her.
"Your Majesty...?"
The moment she called him that, Hyperion felt a pang of regret. He addressed her by her name, and still Laniakea called him, without fail, Your Majesty.
"Sleep a little more."
"But... today, we have to... do it..."
She did not say what they had to do, and in that instant Hyperion felt the blood rush downward. His body aroused so immediately it was almost absurd, and he understood: that a few ordinary words could sound more tempting than any lewd speech.
"I don't want to hold someone who's asleep."
"Even so... what's to be done... has to be done..."
What had to be done.
The words turned bitter in his mouth. To her, all of this was a duty to be carried out.
Not much time had passed since he took the throne, but in that span he had seen how earnestly Laniakea threw herself into everything. In truth, Hyperion had believed she would handle an empress's work only passably. Even if she chose her maids and left the whole of it to them, no one would have thought ill of her. But Laniakea was diligent in all things, as if she were someone who meant to remain here from now on.
And so Hyperion had hoped. That even now her heart might change. That if he tried harder, she might stay.
But.
Even as pleasure made Laniakea grind herself against him, she had been saying she would leave this place. It was what he himself had promised, and yet the words that confirmed it left him somehow resentful, and Hyperion had rubbed all the harder at a deeper place. Even when she was soaked below and on the very edge of fainting, she had not taken them back.
Remembering the night before, that resentment rose quietly again.
"A duty, is it. In a state like this?"
At his words she gave a small nod with her eyes closed. Then, as if she had fallen asleep once more, the soft sound of her breathing reached him.
"Do you have any idea what I might do, trusting your body to me so defenselessly?"
For a moment Hyperion imagined holding her while she slept—imagined her lying still and unknowing, no matter how he toyed with her. Sucking at the breast left bare and unguarded. Stroking the belly that would someday swell. Slipping between legs that held neither tension nor resistance, because she did not know what was happening...
"Haa."
A sigh thick with heat escaped him. The more he thought, the more the images that followed were nothing but filth.
His wife drew up, far too easily, a perverse inclination buried so deep in him that even he had not known it was there—all while acting as if she would accept anything.
His gaze traveled below Laniakea's throat. Through the disordered front of her clothes he could see the soft breast he had taken his fill of. He hesitated a moment over whether to seize that rapturous body again, then took the hand of hers that lay limp upon the bed.
When their fingers laced and he pressed their palms firmly together, her sleeping body gave a small twitch.
"Nnh..."
He had clasped her hand like this whenever he gave her pleasure, and her body seemed to answer by remembering that time. Even so, Laniakea did not wake.
At the sight, Hyperion decided he would be satisfied with this much tonight. He truly did not want to tire her any further.
As he quietly toyed with nothing but her hand, what Signo had reported that afternoon came back to him.
"When she received the papers changing her official title to Empress Dowager, it seems she smashed quite a few of the ceramics there."
Today an imperial messenger had arrived where the former empress was staying. She had now been granted, officially, the station of Empress Dowager, leaving behind the ambiguous title of former empress.
One might think that good for everyone, but the Empress Dowager would have understood. The moment she was notified that the title of Empress Dowager was to be used in official capacity, she would be treated entirely as a person of the past. And unlike the dowagers before her, she had not been given a detached palace of her own in which to live, so wielding influence over the imperial household as she once had was now utterly impossible.
But Hyperion could not lower his guard. Because of the report that followed.
"They say the Second Prince's consort worked hard to soothe an Empress Dowager in that state."
The Second Prince. To Hyperion he had been a younger brother, and that brother had had a wife.
The problem was that the Second Prince and his consort had two children.