The Children of the Stars

A Thousand Questions

Nellith awoke with her hands shackled above her head in the room that they'd found Jacen in. Her jacket, scarf, and boots had been removed, just leaving her in her torn and dirty Hapan dress. Half her hair had fallen out of the three buns riding down her scalp, in memory of her mother.

Looming over her was the figure of her sister. Darth Keera had changed clothes in the interim of time since Nellith had been knocked unconscious.

The Empress of the Sith was dressed in a white silk nightgown, a matching lace dressing gown over it with the ties done as tightly as possible around the waist. Her saber-staff hung on the sash, a disturbing reminder of why her sister would always be dangerous. Even with the black curls loose and girlish, barefoot and vulnerable, her sister still had those yellow Sith eyes.

"I was wondering when you would wake, dear sister." Her voice was still lyrical and like the sound of a river running over stones merrily. The dark side had not changed that she sounded like the woman Nellith wished was standing in front of her.

"Cut the crap, Thea, you and I both know you used the Force to revive me, just the same as you used it to put me to sleep."

Darth Keera raised an eyebrow, then clucked her tongue. "I do not go by that name anymore. This attitude will grow tiresome for the both of us. I suggest you retire it, before it causes unpleasant consequences."

Nellith wouldn't. It was all she had left. Either way, live or die from here, her life was forfeit. She would die, or become a slave to Keera again.

If it was all going away, anyway, she might as well try to fight back, futile as it was.

There was hope in such a gesture.

Wasn't there?

"You've done badly, my Hand," Darth Keera crooned. She knelt down, and placed her pale fingers under Nellith's chin, forcing her to meet those cold yellow eyes. "I now understand that my lover was not as faithful as I'd believed. No matter. He will be retrieved and punished for his actions, before he will come to love me again."

"Zekk does love you," Nellith hissed. "He never wanted you to become this."

"Shh, with the childish talk." Darth Keera examined her in eerie silence for a moment. "He has removed your memories of your time under me. No matter. That will be an easy place to start."

Her other hand hovered inches above her forehead.

Nellith flinched, eyes screwing shut. She couldn't stand just the knowledge of what she'd done, much less the memory of the acts and whatever torture she'd undergone at Thea's hands—

But they never came.

Confused, Nellith opened her eyes.

Darth Keera wrinkled her nose, and made a more forceful gesture, and starting to repeat it.

Nellith gasped. Her head started to feel as if someone were beating her forehead with a battering ram, crushing her temples.

She let out a scream just as Darth Keera shoved into her brain, and was greeted by a recoil in the Force. She quickly picked herself up off of the ground, and let out a snarl.

"Why can't I enter your head?"

Darth Keera didn't wait for the answer that Nellith didn't have. Black lightning sprang from her fingertips. Nellith screamed and writhed as much as she could in the shackles.

Darth Keera screamed back at her as the lightning intensified— Nellith didn't think that possible— and Nellith thought her sister would kill her in this rage.

Then with a single gesture, Darth Keera slammed the back of Nellith's head against the wall with the Force. She panted, and then pushed her curls back, pinning the disheveled ones out of sight.

She smiled. "I suppose we'll just have to do this the old-fashioned way. Fine by me. Since I can't get my Hand back, I suppose I will just have to cut my losses."

This was where Nellith had hoped it would go. Execution was preferable to becoming the Empress's Hand again. Still, her pulse quickened in her chest.

"Ben Solo and Rey Skywalker will come for their children, at least one of them will," Darth Keera promised. "The only ones with the power to stop me. And they won't. Because my Academy has been training to take them on. They aren't gods. They will fall to the might of the dark side."

Darth Keera then tilted her head. "It really is a pity that mighty Skywalker blood must be spilled. But I cannot have my plans ruined. I just cannot."

And then Nellith was in a world of pain.