i wish i could say everything i've done and still be loved.
When she arrives, there is no drama or fanfare to follow. Her descent is steep and noiseless, punctuated only by the crunch of her hooves against the frosty grass as she lands.
Delumine is beautiful. Some part of her is surprised, and another part knows she shouldn’t be. The air is biting-chilly, and the swathes of trees that bristle against the rising silhouette of the citadel are painted in bright strokes of wine-red, goldenrod, moorish deep purples. Underfoot the ground is brittle with ice and dying flora. For once Mari is without her regalia, free from war paint or signias: all things considered, it seemed a little trite to come discuss politics as if she were already prepared for war.
By the time she makes it into the inner city, it’s well past dawn. Thin sunlight streams down and coats the cobblestone in pale shine. Mari is acutely aware of the gazes that follow her as she walks through the streets, how they watch with the intensity and suspicion of a people scorned, the way they know, instinctively, that she does not belong here: the scars on her shoulders and the hard lines in her expression belie her strangeness.
(She tries not to mind, but it’s hard. It’s hard. How did Asterion do it, all those years in power? And Florentine before him? It’s been but a few weeks, and the weight of it is already starting to crush her. How long before it pulls her down completely?)
The guard at the front of the gates gives her a look that says explain and nothing more. The wariness in his eyes tightens the muscles in her shoulders. Marisol draws to a stop; nervously she squares her stance and meets his eyes, and in a voice that manages to give the illusion of calm, asks to see Ipomoea.
By the time she’s let inside and sent to meet him, she still doesn’t know exactly what to say.
The trees have begun to change, in true fall and festive fashion. As Ipomoea looks out from the window of an upper tower, all he sees spread out to the east is a blanket of red and gold and orange and green, colors reaching up to touch the skies.
Once, he might have thought they looked like flames, like the fiery kiss of the morning sun.
But he’s seen what the trees look like to truly burn, and there was nothing beautiful about that sight.
”Sir?” he turns from the window to study the young page that stands nervously in the doorway.
“Please, Cael, call me Ipomoea.” Strange, he thinks to himself. They never called me ‘Sir’ when I was their Regent. Perhaps they no longer saw him as one of them, not since he had left. The boy smiles hesitantly.
“Ipomoea,” he concedes, although he breaks the name up into two many broken syllables. “Queen Marisol is asking after you. She came herself from Terrastella.” He nods as a dismissal, and waits until Cael has disappeared before he steps away from the window. His hoofbeats echo loudly against the marble tiling, and not for the first time it reminds him of how quiet the Court has become. Like Delumine does not yet know that she is safe, that the threat to the east is gone.
Perhaps the land knows something he doesn’t; but the trees whisper only of the warm sun and cold nights, and how bare their branches feel when the leaves begin to drop. If there’s a warning they’re trying to tell him, it feels only like winter and nothing more.
He finds her waiting for him in a round and airy room, lined with windows that face the courtyards on either side. One on side a few children play a game of marbles; on the other a single, lonely scholar reads beneath an oak tree. He hopes she doesn’t see how empty the Court appears. He hopes she doesn’t notice how the laughter seems to have been drained from Delumine. He hopes he’s wrong, and that the city beyond is ringing with noise his own ears are simply not keen enough to hear.
“Your Grace,” he says, and tries not to think of how the words feel like they still belong to another Sovereign, a King with stars in his eyes and saltwater in his veins. Ipomoea smiles past the sudden lump in his throat, and steps forward to brush his muzzle against her shoulder - if she lets him. Even now, in the most formal of ranks, still he struggled to contain his own informality.
“I trust you had an uneventful flight? It’s a rather long way from Terrastella to Delumine, can I get you anything?” There’s another question left unspoken, when he pulls back to meet her level gaze.
i wish i could say everything i've done and still be loved.
In this court, the air is still and oh-so-quiet. Even in Terrastella’s sleepiest corners there is always the beating of wings, or the sound of movement, or a soft-playing song; here there is only the clack of those marbles moved by kids near the fountain, and the susurrus of old pages being flipped under the closest tree. It is at once both calming and uncomfortable.
What danger is there that must be lurking underneath all that silence?
Marisol realizes that she has never heard Dawn’s regent (sovereign, she reminds herself) speak. When his voice sounds, she is surprised, just a little, by how easy it sounds, how confident he is. How grown he seems, too, when all she’s heard of him is his ever-after youthfulness.
She wishes she could sound like that, and is almost sure she doesn’t.
But there’s little to be done about that now. There are things far more pressing. With effort she pulls on a mask of composure. Smooths out her breaths and the slope of her shoulders—does not flinch away from the touch of his muzzle against her shoulder, surprised though she may be, and gods she is surprised. What different customs they have here! Or maybe the two of them are simply different—down to their bones, the placement of their wings, how they deign to show their respect.
“You can always call me Marisol,” she tells him softly, and tentative, like a foal just learning how to walk, reaches out to brush a touch against the place where his neck meets the slope of his shoulder. Her mouth and nostrils fill with the smell of flowers. Briefly she wonders what aura she gives off—sea salt, or sword-edge, or something like blood.
Now the Commander pulls back, regarding him with a little smile that is surprisingly genuine, and her ears flicker forward in interest. “Thank you, King Ipomoea, but I’m well enough; don’t worry about me. And I’ve brought something, from Terrastella. For you.” Her smile fades just a little, and her eyes cast down, but the illusion is gone for only a moment before she meets his gaze again. “I know you and Asterion were good friends.”
With a sheepish look she pulls it out from underneath a folded wing: a heart-sized paper nautilus shell whose soft edges and ribs are lined with thin bands of green-tinged gold, the color of kelp, of sun on water. It still smells faintly of brine, still holds residual warmth from where it was laying in the light.
He had heard that the Queen was a Halcyon, a fighter for the Dusk Court. He had also heard that the Halcyon adorned themselves with war paint to denote their rank, wearing the symbols with pride. But today she has come to him plain and unadorned, without a flock to accompany her.
It makes the curiosity inside of him grow, and the questions linger there at the tip of his tongue, begging to be asked. But Ipomoea merely smiles at her, and waits. He knows Queen Marisol’s reputation, and he knows she will not leave him waiting for long.
“Marisol,” he concedes, dipping his head politely. “And you may always call me Ipomoea, as well.” It’s a relief, to be able to drop the formal titles - and he hopes the informality is a hint of something more, a blossoming of friendship between them and their Courts. Delumine needed more of that, and he thought maybe Terrastella did, as well.
When she pulls back he does the same, expectation making his heart flutter. But when her smile fades, and the name Asterion falls from her lips like a sigh, he feels his throat begin to tighten. And he watches quietly as she pulls the offering from beneath her feathers, and lays it out before him for the morning sunlight to annoint.
For a moment he’s silent, swallowing thickly pas the lump that has formed in his throat.
“I did not know him as well as I would have liked to,” he admits quietly, without meeting her gaze. He’s admiring the paper nautilus shell, with a sad, wistful gaze. He would have thought of Asterion even if she had not brought it with that very intention - it’s a thing from the sea, and the smell of the ocean that clings to it is the same that clung to Asterion. The thin bands of color reminds him of the island, the way they had chased a doe with crystalline horns through a forest that was the same green-tinged gold, and of the way he had stood on the beach and watched kelp dance in the current.
“But I always knew him to be good, and a good friend,” he goes on, and his eyes raise to meet her’s again. He smiles, and faint and sincere. “Thank you, for this.”
He’s watching her carefully now, the woman that was Asterion’s replacement, the Regent-turned-Sovereign. It makes him feel almost guilty - he had come into his own position far less honorably than her, he thinks. He had left his Court, and come home to take the crown from his friend, his brother-in-all-but-blood. She had not had a choice other than her decision to lead when they had no other leader.
And from what he had heard of Queen Marisol and of the Dusk Court, he had inferred that it was her love of the court and of her king that had made her decision so easy.
“How is Terrastella?” he asks softly, and he’s sincere in wanting to know. “What brings you to our Court today, Marisol?” It was a pleasure to welcome her, truly - but Ipomoea suspected she was here to deliver more than a seashell. The Dusk Court could not spare their queen for long, not in times like these.
i wish i could say everything i've done and still be loved.
Something in her is nervous: nervous about the ways he might react, about the things he might say, about what those things might mean for the bond between their courts or what it could unspool in the near future. Marisol has always felt responsibility, but not like this. Not in a way that could ruin her people, her home.
Not in a way that could make life unbearable—for her, for him, for everyone they love.
Marisol swallows thickly. Between them the nautilus shell hovers, delicate like the edge-petal of a spring flower, a reminder of everything Terrastella has lost and all the things they have left to lose. She cannot disappoint them. They have cycled through too many sovereigns to have another one disappear.
Ipomoea must feel the same. Dawn has had its fair share of losses; even now, she’s heard rumors of something stirring in their forests, of corpses being found, poachers and sacrificed animals. But now is not the time. Nor the place. Now Mari must stifle her suspicions. She must wear the diplomatic smile that fits her so strangely and tightly; she must speak of things less grave.
How is Terrastella? So much for casual conversation—Mari does grin, a brief, selfconscious thing, if only to laugh at the turn they have taken, how difficult it is for a king and a queen to keep their minds off all the things to be done, all the problems to be solved. “We are well,” she sighs. “Enough.” For a moment, her dark lips purse. Maybe in regret. Maybe in concern.
“And I hope your people are well, too,” Mari adds after a breath, voice soft and heavy with sincerity. “I came to give you this—“ she nods at the shell, “and to discuss, if you are willing, my hopes of a continued peace between our courts. With all of Novus changing recently, I think it could be… a source of stability. For the people.”
For me is what she doesn’t say. For me—my peace of mind, the weight of the world.
She watches Ipomoea, checking the planes of his face for tension, suspicion, anything poor he may be thinking of her. Asterion was better suited for this kind of thing and always had been; something about his face or his wit or his charm garnered him scores of friends and distraught lovers. Being Regent had been easier. Splitting the jobs had been easier.
He wants to press for more, to ask her why she sighs and why Terrastella is only “well enough.” Ipomoea knows what it’s like to take over a kingdom in… less than the best of circumstances (really, was it ever good to lose a king? No matter how it happened?)
So he doesn’t ask her what he wants to. Ipomoea only smiles and says ”Are you sure I can’t get you a drink, something warm? Perhaps this conversation is better suited indoors, where we can make ourselves comfortable.”
It’s a trick he learned as an Emissary, so long ago now it feels like another lifetime. It was always safer to talk politics with food, and drink, and somewhere bright. And, of course, as far away from any eavesdroppers as possible - even when talking about peace, even when exchanging gifts, even when the whole Court appears to be sleepily starting its day, oblivious to the two Sovereigns meeting alone in the courtyard. Even then, Po knows better.
“I have no desire to start animosity with your Court, Lady Marisol. Dusk has always been a friend to the Dawn, and we are in no rush to change that.” His looks at her from the corner of one cherry eye, as he moves towards the waiting citadel. She had come without her war paint - and he supposes that is a good sign. Asterion had trusted her, and he had trusted Asterion, and that too, was a good sign.
But Ipomoea has just come home from a war, and the ground still echoes with the cries of it.
“If you are willing, perhaps we can work out an arrangement to ensure our peace will hold?” There was no such thing as certainty, in todays’ world. But Ipomoea was in no rush to admit such things.
i wish i could say everything i've done and still be loved.
She wishes she could trust him; as implicitly as her people trust her, or as Asterion trusted his fellow sovereigns. But that is not the kind of woman Marisol was taught to be—and certainly not the kind of leader that she wants to look like, not in front of anyone but much less in front of someone who holds just as much power as she does.
Perhaps her stance is a little stiffer than it needs to be. Perhaps some part of her will not really relax until she is outside the walls of the city and back in the cold but familiar embrace of the gray sky. But when he smiles and offers her a drink—something warm—with, seemingly, the sincerity of someone offering a gift to their friend, the knot in Mari’s chest unwinds slightly and her shoulders fall a little further.
Gently, she shakes her head no again, but the offer, small as it might be, will certainly not be ignored.
I have no desire to start animosity with your Court, Lady Marisol, the Dawn sovereign says as he moves toward the citadel. It’s the answer she was expecting, but still the Commander finds herself both pleased and relieved to hear the admission aloud. She follows patiently at his hip, a position that she rarely holds—trailing instead of leading, letting someone else take charge—but whatever prickle of discomfort she feels at being second-in-line is soothed by Ipomoea’s warm voice and the view of the courtyard around them.
Dawn’s beauty is what she expected. Heart-stilling and warm. Every place they pass is tinged pink and fogged over faintly like a dream. It is a calm, understated kind of loveliness, serene as the bottom of a river or the swirling of cherry blossom petals; she understands, finally, what its citizens find so alluring about it.
The boy-king’s voice breaks through again: If you are willing, perhaps we can work out an arrangement to ensure our peace will hold?
“Absolutely,” the Commander answers. Her voice is quiet but doubtless, a confident response delivered with little a pause, if any; a little smile even works its way across her lips as she ducks her head at him in agreement. "I would be honored to come to such an agreement with you."
Is this what diplomacy looks like?
And when he leads her out of the courtyard and into the rest of the world, she follows willingly.
She stands there looking at him, looking at his Court, and it strikes him then how similar they are. Both of them new to their posts, both of them picking up the mantle of a king that has disappeared. Both of them watching each other with the same mixture of uncertainty and hope, that maybe this time they can be the change they wish to see.
It makes him feel a bit like a boy again, given a choice he did not feel prepared to make.
But he smiles despite that, and turns to lead her towards the citadel. The gardens open up around them, the roses are blooming, the birds are singing in the trees - and for now, he can lean into the idea that peace is something tangible, something that can be trusted in. Even with winter creeping up as frost on his windowsill each night, and with the drumbeats of war still echoing inside of his chest, Ipomoea is starting to feel as though both of them can be put on pause, if only for a little while.
“Then allow me to show you my Court, Queen Marisol,” he says, bowing his head as they first step onto the marble floor of the citadel. “And perhaps by knowing each other, we can build something brighter between the Dusk and the Dawn-“
And then they disappear side by side into the citadel, as if they have left both the winter and the war out in the cold.
![[Image: ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda...jvUop12efQ]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c175b84a-409b-40aa-8b86-49ed65b989ee/ddg6quy-9d15dab5-339c-4b09-8b57-20a99fda550e.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2MxNzViODRhLTQwOWItNDBhYS04Yjg2LTQ5ZWQ2NWI5ODllZVwvZGRnNnF1eS05ZDE1ZGFiNS0zMzljLTRiMDktOGI1Ny0yMGE5OWZkYTU1MGUucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.j-t9RuUsmMyaVL-O1rvZqbyyPYdOvtjHLjvUop12efQ)
