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Chapter Five: Suzaku no Miko
Hotohori:
I could not wait to tell her. Protocol would have dictated that I wait at least through the night, until my guest was rested and I could explain to her what I asked of her in more formal terms. But as I lie in bed, mulling over the day's events in my head until there was no more chance of sleep, my heart pounding in my chest every time I thought of her--I could not wait.
So I stood, and donned a robe, and slipped out of my chamber in search of hers. There were some few servants about at that hour--there were always servants about, somehow, but they kept to their own affairs unless I asked something of them. Right now I wanted only not to be disturbed, and they complied. The hall floor was cold against my bare feet, and the robe I had chosen did little to keep out the breeze that brushed through the outer hallways of the palace. Perhaps if I had been more accustomed to wandering it at night, I would have known. But I did not, and I hurried toward the set of rooms I had given my guests.
Faint light shone from underneath the door, a subtle reminder that I could easily have come while she was asleep. But I had not. I had barely raised my hand to knock lightly on the door when it swung open, and she motioned me inside.
"Akane." She had told me her name, and it was beautiful. The colour of the dawn, it meant. I was as infatuated with it as I was coming to be with her. She stood at the door in a borrowed nightgown that was too big for her, billowing around her legs and falling off one shoulder. The long midnight hair that had been braided that afternoon now flowed wispy around her pale face with a life of its own. Had I thought before that she wasn't beautiful? "I hoped...."
"Hotohori-sama." She said it as though she had been expecting me, and perhaps she had. She motioned me inside, letting the door swing shut as she curled onto the foot of the bed and pulled a blanket around her shoulders. "Yes, I'm still awake. What's on your mind?"
"I want to ask you something." It was not the most graceful beginning to a speech I had ever made, but it would suffice. And she was listening. So I told her of the prophecy of my youth, that a girl from another world would appear, and gather the warriors of Suzaku, and be the saviour of my empire. That I would serve and protect this girl, along with the six others who bore the symbols of Suzaku's stars, and, finally, that I wanted her to be that girl. I do not know how long it took me to tell the tale, only that she listened the entire time, and gave no sign of not believing me.
Finally, I had no more to say. "Would you...would you become Suzaku no miko, and save my empire?" It was the last, the only request I had of her. Save one my heart had not yet the courage to ask.
And almost to my surprise she nodded, her dark eyes serious and capturing my own. "Yes," she said, barely more than a breath. "Yes, I will...."
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Akane:
It was just too much. I couldn't sleep--I couldn't get comfortable in this strange bed, in this strange palace, surrounded by people and events so strange I couldn?t categorise them. So what was I doing? Pacing, and every now and again glancing up through the bedroom window that looked out on a foreign sky, with completely foreign stars.
So it wasn't too much of a surprise when I heard footsteps, and the tentative approach of someone else who couldn't seem to sleep. I opened the door to see who it was, and found the Emperor himself just about to raise a hand to my door. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised--who would have more cause to be up worrying about these events more than he? But it didn't quite seem that he was worrying.
"Akane." No, that's wrong--he was worrying about something, that was plain. The way he shifted when he looked at me, and wouldn't quite ever meet my eyes.
"Hotohori-sama." I let him in. He was, after all, the Emperor. But it was more than that--there was that same eager hope, hidden within the worry, that had drawn me to him earlier that day. Hotohori was sweet. He was good. It was as obvious as his beauty, and even more alluring. He sat on the edge of the bed, a little ways away from me, and told me a story more fantastic than anything I'd ever read.
Maybe that was just because I was being offered a starring role in this one. And how could I turn it down? How many times in my life had I longed, prayed, hoped, dreamed of just such a moment, a moment when my stories were more real than my life, when I could live as a character in a book, when I could be the hero and save the handsome prince? They say we grow out of these things when we get older, but don't believe it. Now, at twenty-three, I was just as drawn to the story as I would have been if I were fifteen like Miaka. No...when he looked at me with those stunning golden eyes, and whispered-- "Would you...would you become the Suzaku no miko, and save my empire?"--there was no way I could refuse him. So I just nodded, barely breathing, and promised:
"Yes...Yes, I will."
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