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Maia wakes first, the morning after his wedding. He’s not surprised - he isn’t used to sleeping beside someone else, and his rest was fitful, though not unpleasantly so. He woke several times to the sound of someone breathing much closer than the nohecharei outside the bedcurtains, the feeling of a warm body pressed against his, and each time realized in the hazy moments just before true wakefulness that it was Csethiro, and lay there smiling foolishly into the darkness until sleep took him again.
In the light of dawn creeping in past the curtains of the bed, he admires the pale strands of Csethiro’s hair where some of it has escaped her sleeping braid. A long strand lies across her face, just beneath her nose, and she twitches in her sleep as if it is uncomfortable. Probably it tickles.
They are married, Maia muses. And they have already taken rather shocking liberties with each other. Perhaps she would not mind. No, indeed, surely she would not mind; she was quite clear last night that she welcomed his touch. Carefully, he reaches out and brushes the strand of hair away from her face with a single finger. Csethiro sighs softly in her sleep and shifts closer to him.
Some zhasanai, Maia knows - perhaps even most - sleep in their own apartments, attending upon their imperial husbands when summoned. He is quite sure everyone expects Csethiro to do the same, and he knows himself well enough to guess that he would not often have the fortitude to summon his wife. But Csethiro has listened to his halting descriptions of a Barizheise dav, and has expressed the opinion that it sounds marvelous and that she would be honored to be part of Maia’s dav, in support of which she will take the little-used apartments one floor down from the emperor’s rooms as her own, and spend her nights in Maia’s rooms whenever possible.
Which means he will have time to grow used to sleeping beside her, and to waking to the sight of her hair escaping its braid.
That is a luxury worth more than all the jewels of his rank together.