Story:

Nobunaga's heart gasped inside his chest.

The most powerful offer ever placed before him—half the realm handed over with a wedding ceremony as the only battle, a dynasty sealed in a single night.

His mind ran the calculation in a heartbeat, the way it ran every calculation: roads, alliances, legitimacy, the Miyoshi reduced to a footnote, the Ashikaga made ornaments, all of it, all of it—

And an answer had already formulated itself, well before the calculation finished. Because the calculation was not the man.

"I am an incapable man," he said, bowing his head with theatrical humility, "and already too fortunate—blessed with two wives. I fear I am far too naive and unworthy to assist Tenno-sama in ruling an entire country. Such a seat would crush a mere country samurai from Owari."

Michiru-sama looked away.

The temperature of the room dropped by a polite degree. She turned her profile to him and reached for her brush with perhaps a touch more firmness than calligraphy required, and Nobunaga—who had read the moods of war councils, assassins, and demon queens—recognized with dawning alarm the unmistakable posture of a grumpy empress.

Of course she had never expected him to accept straight away. An empress understands negotiation, angles, the long game. But being rejected—flatly, sweetly rejected—by a country samurai in his first audience?

That was really very annoying.

"Nobunaga-kyo," she said, dipping her brush with a crisp, dangerous little tap, "is it not the same Nobunaga-kyo who cannot even manage his two wives? Who caused such a nuisance at the Tennoji event that every countryman from Ōshū to Satsuma now knows the Demon Lord of the Sixth Heaven is owned—pardon, served—by two wives who are entirely beyond his control?"

She began brushing characters with aggressive elegance. "The realm's most feared warlord. Ruled at home. Perhaps it is your household, not the Shogunate, that requires unification by force."