She reached out to him and pulled him into her arms. He took a deep, shuddering breath and clung to her, crying against her shoulder while she stroked his hair. "Shhh," she soothed. "I'm here. It's all right. I'm not going anywhere."
Houki had grown up to be a lady of the Imperial Court. She was beautiful, but so were dozens of others. She was quiet and reserved, quite proper for a woman of her age and station, and so had been thoroughly eclipsed by her uninhibited "double," Lady Korin. When Korin had moved on into the emperor's inner circle, she finally had the hope of being noticed as a promising marriage prospect.
Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined who would notice her. She had simply looked up from her painting one day to see him staring at her, amazement warring with haunted loneliness in his expression. For a moment, she thought she heard a ghost of pleased laughter carried on the breeze. Without warning, he bowed deeply and asked her to do him the favor of becoming his empress.
She should have heard the tears in his voice.
One does not turn down a proposal of marriage from one's sovereign. One also does not expect love in such a match. Love is the one luxury the nobility cannot afford. Yet she found herself falling for him, heart and soul.
That made it hurt all the more.
He honored and cherished her as his wife. He treated her with considerable respect. He put his empire at her disposal. When they made love, he was unfailingly gentle and generous. She might almost believe he truly cared for her.
She had known at the outset that he loved another. As one of the seven legendary Suzaku Seishi, he had devoted his life to the Suzaku No Miko. Even after the Miko had been banished back to her world and he had lost his Seishi power, he still could not forget her. He would probably long for her until the day he died.
Houki knew this and accepted it. What she had not realized was that she would forever remain in her double's shadow. Lady Korin--or, as her identity had been revealed, the Seishi Nuriko--had perished in the service of the Miko. Although the emperor had consistently deflected Korin's advances because of his first love, that final sacrifice had broken something inside him.
So his wife helped shoulder the responsibility of ruling the besieged Konan, she prayed for him when he led his army into battle, she held him at night when he wept for his people, she nurtured the life he had started within her...and, every so often, she whispered softly into his troubled dreams, "I love you, Hotohori."
...Ever hoping that, perhaps one day, he would whisper back.