Things I Want to Give
"Laniakea."
"I'm all right. I just—I just lost my strength. I really am fine..."
She truly was all right. More than all right—she was overjoyed. She had carried a coronation that had nearly collapsed into ruin all the way through to a triumphant end, and she had made the people remember the Toulois Territory that had weighed so long upon her heart.
Nor was that all. She had made it unmistakably clear to the Empress Dowager and to everyone who followed her: she would restore every last thing they had destroyed. The memory of the Dowager's face, twisting the instant she understood, rose sharp before her. She ought to have burst into laughter, and yet she could not understand why the tears were coming.
"Laniakea."
A voice, dropped even lower, called her name.
"You did wonderfully today."
Familiar arms gathered her trembling body close, and a hand moved slowly over her back, as if to tell her that she was safe now. At that touch—already grown so familiar—the last of her tension melted away, and Laniakea's tears spilled without pause. She buried her face against the broad chest that held her and wept aloud, but the sound vanished entirely, swallowed by his embrace.
Hyperion held her for a long time, until the tears finally ceased.
And so the flawless coronation came to an end.
Grrrgle.
At the rumble from her stomach, Laniakea opened her eyes. Or rather, she tried.
"Mm...?"
But her eyelids would not obey her. It was as if someone had smeared glue across them. While she struggled again and again to force them open, her stomach growled once more, and a savage hunger seized her all at once.
Why?
She was not the sort who woke hungry. If anything, her appetite was so poor that a long while had to pass before she could manage to eat anything at all. So why did she feel as starved as someone who had gone an entire day without food?
I did go hungry, though.
She had eaten only the bare minimum while dressing for the banquet, and then stood all day—
"Ah!"
The instant the thought reached that far, Laniakea bolted upright. Right. There had been a coronation, and a banquet. Once she began to remember, the rest came flooding in: the crown, the Empress Dowager, the banquet, the tea, and the memory of returning to the Main Palace and sobbing until she could not stop. Somewhere in the midst of it, she had fallen asleep...
She meant to look around and learn what hour it was, what had become of everything, but she still could not see a thing. Only after pressing her fingers to her eyelids several times did she manage, with difficulty, to open her eyes.
"They're terribly swollen..."
She needed no mirror to guess their state. Puffed up like a carp, no doubt. As her blurred sight slowly returned, Laniakea turned out of habit toward the place beside her. It was empty.
"He isn't here."
The words sounded forlorn even to her own ears. Pressing a hand to her aching head, she took up the rest of yesterday. She had wept for a long while in his arms, and Hyperion had kept calling her name, whispering again and again that she had done well. Each time she heard that simple praise, a deep relief and joy had washed through her—even as the tears kept falling.
What followed lived only in scraps. When she had collapsed onto the bed, spent from crying, Hyperion had taken every ornament from her hair so she might lie more comfortably. He had changed her clothes as well.
What did I do then?
She thought she had simply given herself over to his hands, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
Laniakea looked down at the nightgown she wore. It was a garment of many ties, and each one had been fastened neatly and tight. All of it, of course, would have been Hyperion's doing. She climbed down from the bed and crossed to the window on unsteady feet. The sun was already high overhead. When she turned her head, the hands of the clock pointed to noon.
Thinking she had slept a very long time indeed, she made for the bath.
A little later, once she could open her eyes a fraction more, Laniakea changed in a hurry. Soothing this hunger came first.
I should go out and tell them to prepare a meal.
Or perhaps she ought to go straight to the dining hall of the Main Palace and wait there. She was thinking as much, her hand already on the door, when it opened first with a soft click.
Hyperion stood beyond it. Seeing her already up, he smiled in greeting.
"Did you sleep well, Laniakea?"
"Yes. Thanks to you... I'm sorry!"
Shame would not let her raise her face. She had come home and, without warning, broken into sobs, then toppled over and fallen asleep entirely of her own accord. How taken aback he must have been. And the Emperor himself had tended her in every particular, as a maid might have done.
"I don't understand why you're apologizing, when a whole day of thanks still wouldn't be enough for you. More to the point—now that you're awake."
His gaze dropped to what he carried. In one hand was a large tray crowded with every kind of food.
"Let's eat first."
Laniakea's hands moved without pause, and the food on the plates vanished just as quickly into her mouth. She ate in silence for a long while and only stopped once the roast chicken was gone. At once Hyperion set the cup beside him down in front of her. She took it quickly and drank.
"Haah..."
Only after emptying it to the bottom in a single draught did she let out a satisfied breath.
"If it isn't enough, I'll have more brought."
"No. I'm full now."
With the hollow in her stomach filled, the world around her finally came clear.
"I thought you'd want to know, so I'll tell you. First—we found the crown."
"You did?"
At the word crown, Laniakea shot to her feet. People said it was the sort of thing that returned if one only waited, but the mere fact of its vanishing had been the trouble.
"Yes. Lucy searched the grounds while the banquet was underway and brought it back. It turned up in the shrubbery of the Main Palace's rear garden. Dust had settled into the cloth, and the jewels bore a few tiny scratches, but otherwise nothing was wrong."
"Haah..."
Relief swept through her at the news that the crown was safe, and she pressed a hand to her chest. Her throat tightened again, just a little. She had feared a month might pass with no return, or that it might come back badly damaged—but it seemed the other side had lacked even that much nerve.
Or else they set it down carefully, believing they would have it in their own hands again someday.
She could not say which it was, but for the moment it was a mercy.
"And Signo has found those suspected of having been bribed. Won't you leave their punishment to imperial jurisdiction?"
A chill moved through Hyperion's eyes as he spoke. He did not need to say what would become of them; she could guess well enough. But Laniakea felt no pity. The crown, of all things—and on the very day of the coronation, they had tried to make off with it. They needed to understand what they had done.
"Please see to it."
"Good. And I'm told that after we came back yesterday, the banquet finished cleanly, without any great trouble to the end. Nothing else of note occurred... though it seems every noble went to Countess Toulois to say they wished to place an order for tea as well."
At the mention of Toulois, Laniakea's face brightened. It was the tea the imperial household had chosen with its own hand, declaring that from this day it would reclaim its former renown. After yesterday's uproar, everyone would be eager to compare the Tulua tea of the present with the Tulua tea yet to come. The leaves supplied to the palace could not be sold, but the nobles would surely sweep up every other tea that remained.
For three years the estate had suffered all the more because what it had tended so diligently would not sell. Now its restoration would begin all the sooner. At an outcome finer even than she had hoped, Laniakea covered her face with both hands. That everything should end so well—she almost wondered if it were a dream. She pressed hard against her own cheeks, but they only hurt, and she did not wake. Not a dream, then.
"I'm truly, truly glad..."
It was not only the crown, nor only Toulois. Those gladdened her too, but what pleased her most was that Hyperion's first official ceremony had ended in success.
"I think so as well. I don't even like to imagine what would have become of it, had my wife not been you."
It was praise for what she had done, and yet the words landed like a quiet confession, and her heart began to race. She drew back a little. The official schedule was finished; for the rest of the Spring Festival, there was nothing more required of her.
I ought to return to the Empress's Palace.
Perhaps, in the days that remained, she could at least see to whatever she might manage alone. She was on the point of saying she would go when Hyperion spoke first.
"Which is why I want to give a gift to you, who brought all of this to such a fine end."
"A gift?"
"Yes. So..."
Hyperion took Laniakea's hand.
"Let's get ready to go out."