True to his word, Enoch was sitting on the edge of the bed. They had sat or stood side by side in public before, but this was the first time the two of them had been this close alone together.
“You are twenty years old, and yet you sleep so much?”
“It, it’s not that…”
Enoch took off his ceremonial jacket and undid a couple of buttons on his shirt. It seemed to be a habit of his, but for some reason Alexa did not know where to look.
“The imperial marriage schedule must be exhausting.”
Alexa gave a slow nod.
Enoch was a powerfully built man with considerable martial skill, but Alexa was only a young noblewoman. For someone like her, the ceremonies that kept coming one after another would naturally be draining.
“Why did you give that answer earlier?”
Alexa looked at Enoch with a puzzled expression.
“Earlier, when Duke Taira asked why you were not wearing the crown he sent as part of the trousseau.”
“That was truly because of the fourteenth empress…”
“No.”
Enoch’s voice resonated low.
“That was a pleasing story. But it was not the truth.”
Indeed, Enoch was no fool.
“Why did you disregard Duke Taira’s gesture and deliberately choose a modest crown, then come up with a reason for it?”
“…I thought it did not suit.”
“What did not suit?”
Alexa shrank without meaning to. The image of Enoch she had formed from the original story frightened her that much.
“It is true that I was adopted into the Taira ducal house, but it is also true that I became Alexa Dias after the imperial marriage.”
Enoch’s black eyes were fixed on Alexa.
“As a woman of the Dias imperial family, I thought it was not fitting to wear a crown made by the Taira ducal house.”
“Hm.”
“And not caring for extravagance… that is the truth.”
Enoch could not take his eyes off Alexa for a long moment.
Alexa was saying that she was not a daughter of the Taira ducal house, but a woman of the Dias family.
With the entire council bowing to Duke Taira’s power and the imperial authority weakened as it was, it was the empress who had come from that very Taira ducal house who said this.
“If that is truly how you feel, then you have what it takes to be empress.”
At those words, Alexa’s eyes went wide. To the twenty-five-year-old Enoch, the sight of her was somehow endearing.
“I had thought all people of the Tairas were the same.”
It had been the senior ministers of the council and the Empress Dowager who decided on the imperial marriage. For Enoch, who had been pushed aside by the entrenched power of the maternal relative faction, accepting this match had been a humiliation in itself.
But the bride he had actually taken in was nothing like what he had imagined.
“You are neither arrogant nor careless.”
He had thought that when a daughter of the Tairas entered the palace, her arrogance would know no bounds. And that she would spend her life at his side as a person of the Tairas, watching him, exalting the Tairas, and making herself unbearable. Just as his own mother Camilla had done.
“Above all, what pleases me is that you call yourself a woman of the Dias family, not of the Tairas.”
Even now, after seeing the late emperor to his grave, Camilla still lived as a person of the Tairas. Thinking of it that way, Alexa was someone Enoch was genuinely grateful for.
On top of that, had she not given quite a clever answer over the matter of the crown earlier? She had been composed and assured in that moment, and yet now she was doing nothing but turning red. He found it oddly curious and unfamiliar.
Enoch watched Alexa for a long while as she sat with her head bowed and her cheeks flushed, then reached out and tapped her cheek lightly with one finger. Alexa’s eyes went as wide as they could go.
“Are you dozing off on me again?”
“No.”
“Then why are you not saying anything?”
Strange.
It was far too strange.
In the original story, Enoch had only stopped by the empress’s quarters on the day of the imperial marriage itself, and after that had committed the discourtesy of never returning, dragging the empress’s dignity through the dirt.
And yet who was this man sitting beside her now?
“I… had nothing to say…”
“You spoke so well earlier.”
“I am sorry.”
At that, Enoch shook his head. Then he looked at Alexa steadily again.
Only then did Alexa realize that the two of them were sitting together on the bed, and that she was wearing nothing but a nightgown through which everything showed.
At some point the distance between them had closed. Enoch had drawn closer to Alexa without realizing it as they talked.
“I hope that feeling of yours does not change.”
Enoch’s voice resonated low. Alexa nodded twice at those words. A faint smile touched the corner of Enoch’s lips.
“Then I will respect you as my empress.”
Alexa had not even hoped for respect. She had only wished not to be despised as wretchedly as the original Alexa had been.
But Enoch had been the one to say the word respect first. Perhaps the wish she had made on the first snowfall had come true after all.
“My feelings will not change.”
Enoch gave a nod, then found himself reaching toward Alexa without thinking.
His hand passed once through her shimmering platinum hair. Alexa startled and her eyes went wide.
“Ah, no.”
Enoch was flustered, which was rare.
“I have thought since the first time I saw you that your platinum hair was remarkable.”
Enoch could not forget the sight of Alexa in the white snowscape, holding an armful of red plum blossoms.
He had wanted to touch the gleaming platinum hair that had drifted in the wind that night.
“Tomorrow the imperial marriage rites will be over.”
“Yes…”
The two of them were already husband and wife. So anything between them was only natural, and yet the simple act of stroking her hair had made the atmosphere awkward in an instant.
“I…”
“I was going to…”
Both of them broke the silence at the same moment, then fell back into awkwardness.
“Please, go ahead.”
“No, you first.”
“No, please go ahead.”
The full lips that moved each time Alexa spoke drew his gaze. He had nearly forgotten what he had been about to say.
The same was true for Alexa. Sitting pressed close to the striking emperor on the same bed, her mind had gone completely blank.
“I was thinking of staying here tonight.”
At Enoch’s words, Alexa’s eyes went wide.
In the original story, the two had never shared a bed in ten years. She could not understand why things were suddenly unfolding this way.
“Yes…”
They were already husband and wife, and the imperial marriage rites were still ongoing, so there was nothing else to say. But even now, at this very moment, Alexa’s mind was full of confusion.
“You know what that means.”
Enoch reached out his large hand and cupped one of Alexa’s cheeks. Whether his hand was very large or her face was very small, one entire cheek was covered by his hand.
Then Enoch leaned down and pressed his lips to Alexa’s. It was not the cold kiss of the wedding ceremony, but a kiss that came from somewhere deeper.
Having kissed her like that, Enoch pushed his hot, soft tongue between Alexa’s full lips and began to explore her slowly.
“……!”
Caught completely off guard, Alexa was on the verge of losing her senses entirely. Their first kiss left her with no idea when to breathe or how to receive him.
But Enoch showed no sign of relenting, pressing his lips into hers more and more intensely with the hand cupping her cheek holding firm, and each time, Alexa’s soft lips parted further.
Between her parted lips, a glimmer of moisture passed, and Enoch’s thumb brushed near the edge of her lips.
Alexa was barely managing to breathe as she received his kiss. Each time their tongues met in that hot, soft sensation, her mind kept going white.
And at last the passionate kiss came to a stop, and Enoch slowly drew his lips away from Alexa’s. But Alexa’s lips remained wet, like a trace left behind by the intensity of it.
“Are you frightened?”
“…No.”
“Then why are you trembling like that?”
She looked down at herself at those words, and her body was quivering faintly. No matter how hard she tried to stop it, the trembling would not cease.
“That is…”
It was not only her body that was trembling. Alexa’s voice was trembling too.
“See, you are shaking.”
A single kiss had left her body and heart trembling beyond her control.
Alexa wrapped her arms tightly around herself to keep from shaking as much as possible, but it did not stop the trembling.
“I have no intention of holding you when you are frightened.”
Enoch lifted the blanket and draped it over Alexa’s shoulders. Only then did the semi-transparent nightgown that had been driving him to distraction disappear from view.
“We have plenty of time.”
Alexa managed a small nod.
In a political marriage, the wedding night was typically something the bride had no say in. Whether she trembled or not, the groom would take her as though staking his claim, and the marriage would be consummated.
But Enoch’s behavior now was far too different from that expectation.
“What I said about staying here tonight, however, is true.”
It was not an ordinary marriage but an imperial marriage.
Whether the union had been consummated was naturally a matter of importance, and if Enoch left early again, there would be talk. So spending the night here was, in its own way, a consideration for Alexa.
