“You…I know your face,” something besides calm and righteousness entered the Jedi’s eyes. Recognition, sympathy; things she did not want to see.
“Hold your tongue, Jedi,” she hissed, even as part of her cried out under its chains. “You know nothing.”
The Jedi shook her head, “no. I know who you are; this is not the path for you. Come with me.”
Wraid crossed her arms, internally berating herself for such a defensive gesture. “Your words-“
The Jedi bowed her head, “Master Kusando was your master. You were a knight among us. Did Krucem and Barillia break you so thoroughly as to turn on us like this, K’Surda?”
Memories flooded back with the names, Jurell’s smiling face and the hands stroking her skin. Lightning, vines around her neck, fire raining from the sky; children ablaze and screaming. Wraid looked down under the sudden weight of it.
“K’Surda?” Vette questioned, never having heard her real name before. It was always Wraid. It had always been Wraid to the Imperials.
“My Lord?” another voice, Quinn’s. It was vague, all the noise of the room, people breathing, machinery working, anyone talking, it all just melted away under the drone of her memories.
Finally her hand moved to one of her sabres, “I am a broken creature, Jedi,” she said quietly, igniting the blade. “No power in this galaxy, light or otherwise, can put me back together.”
She lifted her head and looked at the Jedi not with malice or anger, but a simple tiredness that permeated everything from her expression to her posture. Then she straightened, her eye sharpened, and she thrust her arm forward. “Tell her I am sorry.”
The Jedi slumped to the floor and Wraid stared numbly, still trying to push the flood of images away from her mind. She turned to Quinn and put her sabre away, “I trust I need not tell you and your men to keep their mouths shut.”
He straightened, “you need not, my Lord.”
Wraid nodded once, stiffly, “good.”


