Iridescia: Ipsis: Indas
Today was the last day.
Iridescia rested her hand against the latticed window in what had once been her tower, ignoring her great-aunt Star who lay dozing on Iridescia's old cot. She really ought to start thinking of Ipsis in once hads and had beens. After today, it wouldn't be hers anymore, if it ever had been hers—or anyone's—since the night of the shadows.
It seemed strange that the air should hang thick and humid as it had always done, though there was as much distance between what Ipsis had once been and what she was now, as between the sun and the moon. Liberio and Iridescia—willing or unwilling—had turned Ipsis into another world.
A Children's Court, with grown men for enforcers.
Not everything was terrible though. In the wake of the shadows' attack, peace had fallen on Ipsis. It was enough to let Iridescia forget most of the time just what horrors she'd unleashed on her city—the same ones she might one day have to summon again, if Liberio and Roewyn were ever in danger.
The vines that crept the wall outside tickled Iridescia's skin, full and green from the recent rains. Brushing aside a clutch of twisting leaves, Iridescia pressed her eye right up to one of the holes. Staring through, all Ipsis lay before her, pinched inside a would-be spyglass.
Home.
But not for much longer. After months of preparation, Liberio was ready to march.
Iridescia still wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but the city swarmed with activity. Watching the Lora soldiers Liberio had inherited from his father—from their father—Iridescia could nearly imagine Ipsis was as full of life as it'd been before she'd summoned the shadows. Man called to man as the children orphaned by the coup were ordered this way and that by the eldest of the survivors.
Sometimes, there was even still laughter. People were beginning to dream again, even with the threat of night upon them.
Outside Iridescia's would-be spyglass, sundown drew deep shadows and cast orange light onto the tops of the buildings and the side of Mount Nuna. She peered up and up and up, following the slope of the hill to the trees at its peak, imagining the oncoming darkness as it smothered the Haven.
With a shiver, she pulled away, and just as she did, she locked eyes with Star.
Iridescia's great-aunt was awake.
The former vizier's gaze was intense and unblinking, like she'd been watching Iridescia all the while.
Iridescia gulped. She shouldn't feel sorry for Star, but she did, and that made her feel guilty, like all the people Star had killed—Iridescia's mother and grandmother, Liberio himself and Tobi's parents—meant less somehow than the witch who'd murdered them.
"What is it?" Iridescia asked with her fingers, taking a step toward the sunken cot.
Rather than sign back, Star grinned, the expression hideous on her thin, scarred face. Her lower lip was nearly cut in two where she'd struggled against the ghostly fingers that had torn out her tongue, the skin there still red and glistening as though moist. One of her teeth had blackened from lack of care, and her hair hung lank about her shoulders.
Iridescia wished she'd died.
It would have been kinder if Liberio had let her, but instead he'd commanded that Oran cauterize the wound. He'd wanted Star to live to see all her work turn to dust and her lover's kingdom crumble with it. He assumed Star had lost and wanted her to know it. But the more time Iridescia spent in Star's presence, the more she felt her great-aunt had ambitions greater than those she'd pinned on Hadrianus.
