Private Behind A Cigarette

[Ivalyn Yvarro]

The scent of spiced candle wax still lingered in the air — warm, sharp, and clinging stubbornly to the polished wood and heavy drapery. It mingled now with the curling tendrils of smoke that drifted lazily from the black-label cigarra poised between Ivalyn's fingers. She exhaled slowly, the faint ember glowing at the tip before she tapped the ash into a shallow tray at her side.

Her grandmother's brand — sharp, bitter, familiar. A habit Ivalyn had taken up only in her most agitated moments. Tonight certainly qualified.

The emergency session had dragged deep into the night, leaving Ivalyn drained yet restless — her thoughts still churning with the sharp-edged demands of High Basileous Kelora Priestly. The woman had been relentless, her anxiety honed to a blade, pressing for answers Ivalyn herself barely had.

The Blackwall — that cursed, suffocating curtain of shadow — had swallowed seven Commonwealth worlds whole. Seven vital systems, severed from trade, from resources, from their families. Seven worlds left vulnerable to whatever madness stirred within that void.

Ivalyn took another slow drag from the cigarra, the smoke coiling through her lungs like a calming balm, yet no amount of ritual could quiet the gnawing sense of dread beneath her ribs.

With a flick of her wrist, she activated the holo-comm. The swirling blue light coalesced into the image of Lady Taeli Raaf — her grandmother's wife and a member of the Sith Order's Dark Council. A woman who rarely wasted words.

"Lady Raaf," Ivalyn began, her voice low, measured, and sharp around the edges, "I need answers."

Her fingers drummed against the desk — restless, calculated.

"I've just spent the last six hours being torn apart by my own council, and I can't say I blame them." Her eyes narrowed. "I have seven worlds trapped behind that bloody wall, and the Navy is scrambling to form a fourth fleet just to keep commerce from collapsing in the Outer Territories."

Ivalyn shifted slightly, setting the cigarra in the tray. The ember glowed like a dying star.

"You have always spoken of purpose, Lady Raaf," her voice dipped lower, colder. "But this? This feels reckless. This feels dangerous. And I will not have the Commonwealth dragged into another war without knowing what the hell we're stepping into."

She paused, fingers brushing absently against the cigarra's smooth surface.

Ivalyn chewed on the inside of her cheek, her teeth pressing hard enough to sting. A bitter laugh, dry and humorless, spilled from her lips — a quiet exhalation of disbelief and frustration. Balance help me... she thought darkly, her gaze flicking to the window where the faint glow of Qosantyra's skyline glimmered like embers in the night.

Her mother would have never let this happen. Nor would the Grand Moff before her. No — they would have known. They would have seen the signs, caught wind of the whispers that preceded this sort of madness. Because they understood what the Sith are capable of.

Ivalyn dragged hard on her cigarra, the burn of smoke biting the back of her throat. Her chest rose sharply as she exhaled in a huff — frustration vented into the air like a sputtering engine.

A link to the Dark Council wasn't enough — clearly. Taeli Raaf may have been her grandmother's wife, but proximity wasn't power, and Ivalyn had no intention of standing idle while her people were stranded behind that cursed wall.

No, she needed someone closer to the Emperor. Someone with leverage — someone who could speak directly to the heart of the Order. The Blackshield Mandate was already in motion, the Commonwealth Navy mobilizing as a fourth fleet took shape — but that wasn't enough. Ships alone couldn't outmaneuver politics, and the Sith thrived in a mire of power plays and manipulation.

Ivalyn crushed the cigarra out on a nearby tray, the ember sputtering and smearing into ash. The sharp scent lingered — smoke and spice mingling like the heavy tension in her chest.

Closer, she told herself. I need someone closer to the Emperor... before this gets worse.

The silence stretched too long — thin, taut, and suffocating like a wire pulled to its limit. Ivalyn exhaled a plume of smoke through her teeth, pacing the length of the room with sharp, deliberate strides. The scent of her cigarra mingled with the spiced candle's lingering warmth — comfort clashing with irritation.

Her thumb pressed firmly against her forehead, the dull ache that had been simmering since the Divan's emergency session now pulsing like a hammer behind her eyes. Perhaps her father, Djorn Bline had been right — The only good Sith is a dead Sith.

The old saying had felt like bitter rhetoric when she was younger — crude, reductive, the sort of thing men muttered in dimly lit rooms to make themselves feel powerful. But now? As seven of her worlds languished behind that accursed wall, as Kelora Priestly's relentless demands still echoed in her ears — that bitterness tasted less like ignorance and more like bitter prophecy.

What in the hells have they done?

Another drag, another exhale — the smoke curling upward, curling like the tendrils of uncertainty that knotted her thoughts. If war was coming — if the Sith's madness was unraveling the galaxy yet again — Ivalyn had no intention of waiting for the chaos to reach her doorstep.

Pausing mid-step, she turned back to the holo-comm, narrowing her gaze at the flickering silhouette still holding in static.

Taeli Raaf ​

 

[Taeli Raaf]

Ivalyn Yvarro
​

In most cases, she was the definition of what the Sorceress and Sith Lady who would sit upon the Dark Council would appear as. Stately, elegant, reserved until her words were needed. Mysterious and almost aloof in bearing, amusement or irritation never far from her eye even as she absorbed and processed all that was said around her and distilled the true meaning of the words spoken around her. She was that in almost all cases...

Except when she was woken up at four in the morning, except when she was only on her third hour of sleep because she had a wife who needed her needs seen to and toddlers that had interrupted said needs to for their own.

Hair tousled from sleep, a robe wrapped around her, eyes blinking as she wished for tea as she listened to Ivalyn vent about the fact several Commonwealth worlds were now behind Empyrean's Blackwall. She could understand the pressure the younger woman was under, even empathize with it, but part of her, the part that was praying that Fiolette or the staff knew her need for caffeine, would like to remind her that trying to govern Commonwealth worlds in direct Sith territory was going to be difficult. But she didn't, even as her nose curled at the sight of the cigarra smoke.

"Empyrean finished the Blackwall stormseeds and fleets and went about closing the borders with them," she said, rubbing her eyes. "I'm not happy about it either, Ivalyn, for a whole host of reasons. Least of which is it disrupts my development plans and most of which it split the Commonwealth apparently."

She would stifle a yawn.

"The idea behind it, so I'm told, is to ensure no enemy agents can slip into the region. High ranking officials and Sith and those granted permission can pass through it with Attuned wayfinders. Otherwise the void storms will obfuscate all communications and travel, even destroying ships that try, and if the storms don't, the patrolling fleets will."

Another yawn, unable to be stopped.

"My apologies, Jaq and Morri were being particularly attentive tonight. We have a few options open to us before anything... rash is done."

 

[Ivalyn Yvarro]

Attire​

The scent of clove and spiced tobacco hung like silk in the air, catching in the early light that kissed the Qosantyran skyline. Ivalyn stood framed by the open balcony doors, her black-label cigarra burning softly between her fingers. The city was just beginning to stir below, but here, in this rarefied hour before dawn, the world felt suspended—held taut between one breath and the next.

"My apologies for the hour," she began, her tone level, elegant despite the hour and the rising fatigue in her bones. "And for the intrusion into your rather animated domestic peace. Though I must say, I find your definition of 'attentive' remarkably charitable." Ivalyn took in a breath and exhaled, doing her best not to feel the headache that lingered at the forefront of her mind.

She allowed a small smile, but it did not reach her eyes.

"The fact that Empyrean has raised a veil over half my territory without so much as the courtesy of a communiqué is, as you might expect, a touch galling. And now, I am told, I must acquire a sorcerer's trinket to traverse stars that already bears my flag."

A pause. She turned, exhaling slowly through her nose as she watched the soft flicker of city lights stretch toward the horizon.

"I have seven worlds—seven—that I cannot reach. Cut off. Silent. Not by act of war or treachery, but by decree. By policy."

She flicked a bit of ash into the waiting crystal tray and continued, her voice quieter now, though no less precise.

"I understand the Empire's need for caution. I understand the delicate latticework of war and fear we all tread. But if I may speak plainly, Lady Raaf and I believe I may, this is the sort of action that unravels nations. Quietly. Subtly. Not with fanfare, but with doubt. With the silence that follows after no explanation is given."

She inhaled again, briefly, the glow of the cigarra lighting the lines of her face.

"You are one of the few voices in this Order I will still listen to. But I must ask you plainly: was the Commonwealth simply to wake up to this new reality? Divided. Weakened. Expected to play along?"

She set the cigarra in a crystal dish, ash trailing like a ribbon.

"Whatever comes next must be tempered with foresight, or the consequences shall be far more dramatic than either of us would like. And I do not think that's a crisis you want on your hands. Not while the House Yvarro still remembers how to wield its own knives."

Her gaze softened, but only slightly.

She stepped back from the railing, only to pause at the sound of someone approaching. The Grand Vizier turned, just slightly, catching the familiar figure approaching. Merryn. Her partner. Her anchor. Dressed in a robe, still touched with sleep and the amused annoyance of the woken.

"Go back to sleep, darling," Ivalyn murmured, tone softening as she reached to brush Merryn's arm with the back of her hand.

"Oh yes, sleep," came Merryn's dry reply, arching a brow, "while you're out here with a smoke stick, confiding in my superior."

"I'm simply informing her that she and the Emperor may have accidentally unmade my government," Ivalyn answered breezily.

"I'll fetch the tea. And check if Iskendyr is still asleep," Merryn replied, stepping away with a kiss pressed just behind Ivalyn's ear. "Try not to declare war while I'm gone."

Ivalyn offered a tight smile, and once her beloved was gone, turned back to the holo, her face settling once more into its composed mask.

"You mentioned options," she said, evenly. "Let us start there."

Taeli Raaf​