Work Text:
She wept on his shoulder.
There is a part of her that is Her Redness, the Scarlet Empress, successor to the Shogunate under the Mandate of Heaven, and that part is—always, always—thinking through tactics and stratagems and levels of those both higher and lower than most people bother to form words for. In that part, this situation is simple: he raised arms against an Imperial Consort, and moreover succeeded in the murder. This was treason. She should kill him—no, that was not the Scarlet Empress—she should have him publicly executed. Distribute his children among other lines so even they would never think of their father, end him in every sense, scatter the last precious things he left in the world so they would never come together again.
But she wept on his shoulder. She does not, did not love Soras, not as she loves her Nera, but he gave her children. He was good to them. When she reaches for memories and she finds anything but the image of him breathing his last (painful, slow), she remembers him playing with them. Teaching them little things, how to walk, how to eat. Things they would never remember themselves. Things he did anyway, because they were important.
Nera killed him.
Nera killed Soras, and when she came to him and let herself be something other than the Empress, let herself be his lover, she had wept and Nera said nothing. Worse. Offered her comfort. Said such things happened, even among those whose hearts beat with the blood of the Dragons. Promised to care for those children as if they were his own.
In the moment, she loved him for it. Had been too much in love to see the strategy as plain as day, Nera’s way to build his own noble house out of the ashes of the house Soras could have made.
And now.
And now she sees.
And she is the Scarlet Empress.
She smiles for him and holds him, takes him into her arms. With the smallest piece of her focus, she closes her womb—giving a prayer of thanks to Jupiter that she can, for were it otherwise she would never be able to take him as she needs—and she nicks him five times with five imperceptible needles.
(She does not think of the times she has prayed to Venus in exultation in this bed, with this man.)
A week later, Nera stumbles into her court. He looks terrible. He looks worse than Soras ever did, but then, Soras was putting on a brave face for his children right to the end. Nera wants her sympathy.
A physician moves, anticipating her orders, until she raises a hand. “It appears Soras’ murderer was not careful enough of his own poisons.”
Those closest move back, avoiding either the disease now in Nera’s system or simply the target of their Empress’s ire. Nera stares at her, open-mouthed.
There is surprise, but no anger. No hint of betrayal. He is laid bare and she sees only the feeling that his petty strategy had failed.
She thinks, I love you , and remembers all the times he told her the same. She wonders if there is something broken inside her, that she chose the better partner over the better father, that she chose the better manipulator over the more charismatic.
That she chose her Soras to marry, but her Nera to love.
Nera’s face crumples. She has seen him lie, she knows. But this does not seem to be a lie. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, audible only because the court has gone silent, only because his breathing is the loudest thing in the room. “I thought—“
Whatever he thought stops mattering as his throat swells. The room goes truly silent as his desperate gasps cease. When the same happened to Soras, they had to cut into his throat to keep him alive, but all it had given was a few more days. He claws at his own throat, as though trying to puncture it with his nails.
He mouths a word, and her courtiers will argue over what it was for decades. Some will insist it was not even in High Realm, and that will be the closest any come to the truth of the matter.
Years ago, Nera asked for a vow. Some secret between the two of them, something he could hold close to his chest and know it meant she was his as much as he was hers. She gave him her name.
He dies with it on his lips. In that moment, the heart and the head of the heir to the Mandate of Heaven agree, if for fully different reasons.
No one will speak Nera’s name after this. Those who were born by him will be in new houses, will call themselves by new names—or by no family name at all.
And no one shall speak her name, either.