Story:

Then—the bamboo curtain rose, entirely, all the way to the carved ceiling, gathered by the servant's practiced hands.

And Nobunaga saw her.

Tenno Ogimachi Michiru sat enthroned upon cushions of imperial brocade, and for the first time in many years, Oda Nobunaga of Owari—man who had faced armies, demons, and the Hell Forcr itself without blinking—simply stared.

She wore a luxury kimono layered in shades he could not name, twelve folds of silk that moved like light through water when she breathed.

Her brown hair cascaded behind her, unbound and endless, falling like a waterfall pouring over the shoulders of the realm itself.

Her makeup was elegant beyond court fashion—powder soft as first frost, lips touched with the color of dawn plum—prettier than the rumors of a thousand provinces had promised.

She was near his own age, he judged, though older than Kicho. A beauty fully ripened—mature, elegant, with a particular charm that shared blood with neither of his wives' splendor.

Kicho's beauty was extravagant, otherworldly, a fireworks display against the night sky. Euphy's was a queen's radiance, sunlight through crown glass.

Michiru-sama's was something older and quieter—beauty like the moon over the imperial city, serene, distant, yet filling the entire sky so completely that nothing else could be seen.

She stands at the same summit, Nobunaga thought, genuinely astonished. The Tenno of Yamato—at the same level of stunning gorgeous as my two wives.

Three peaks, three entirely different mountains, and fate had apparently decided he should survey all of them in a single lifetime.

He did not realize how long he had been looking.

He did realize he was committing a lapse of etiquette—staring at the Empress unveiled, unblinking, like a farm boy at a festival—and still his eyes declined to move.

Michiru-sama read his face. She must have. She raised one silk sleeve and covered her mouth—and behind her eyes, unmistakably, curved with amusement. She allowed it.