There were days when Katarine Ryiah could almost convince herself that she was getting better.
Almost.
She buried herself in the work because work had always been good at swallowing things like grief, loneliness, rage, men, and trauma. The dead had an irritating habit of staying dead when you were investigating murders, and evidence rarely returned from the grave to remind you that everything you had mourned had been a lie.
Ellion Corsair was alive.
That knowledge should have been miraculous. Instead, it had torn open something inside her that Katarine had spent centuries learning how to keep stitched shut. She felt relief, fear, guilt, and angrier at Muad Dib than she could have ever imagined for putting her through this.
So she worked. She returned to the familiar rituals of the Jedi Investigator. Case files. Surveillance. Undercover identities. Crime scenes illuminated beneath sterile lights. Quiet conversations with frightened witnesses and darker conversations with men who believed themselves untouchable.
She clung to the Light with bloodless fingers. For a time, the thing inside her helped. The Yuuzhan Vong biot beneath her flesh carried its precious reservoir through her body one measured drop at a time.
His blood.
The crimson sacrament of the monster who had promised her relief. Force help her, it had worked. The hunger quieted. The shadows stopped whispering from every corner. She could stand near darkness without feeling her pulse leap toward it. She could think. She could breathe. She could walk through the world without feeling as though every darkened presence was a bottle uncorked beneath the nose of a recovering addict.
For a little while, Katarine thought perhaps she had finally found a way to live with what had been done to her. But devils did not offer cures. They offered contracts…. and eventually they came to collect.
She leaned against the edge of a private booth inside one of the syndicate's preferred establishments, red light spilling across her bare shoulders while music pulsed through the floor like a second heartbeat.
The man beside her was laughing. He was some lieutenant. Some king of a very small kingdom who had convinced himself it stretched all the way to the stars.
Katarine laughed too. She touched his wrist when he spoke. She let her eyes linger on his mouth, allowed herself to smile as though his stories fascinated her.
It was an old game. She had played it a thousand times. People told beautiful women things they would never confess to Jedi. Especially when the beautiful woman laughed at their jokes.
"Another drink?"
She should have refused. Instead, Katarine lifted the glass. One drink became three. Three became the private balcony. The balcony became his hand lingering somewhere it shouldn't while Katarine whispered questions against his ear and pretended not to notice that she had missed her scheduled check-in twelve minutes ago.....then twenty.....then forty-five. She knew better. Somewhere inside her, the investigator screamed that she knew better. But her blood felt too warm. Her thoughts moved too quickly. Everything was funny and irritating and intoxicating all at once.
She wanted to laugh. She wanted to strike him. She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to throw him through the transparisteel. The emotions came like lightning strikes, one after another, too fast to name before the next one burned through her.
By the time she finally excused herself, she could barely hear the music over the pounding in her skull. The refresher door locked behind her. Katarine gripped the sink. Her reflection stared back. Green eyes too bright and skin too pale. It was a stranger wearing Katarine Ryiah's face.
She opened the tap and splashed water against her cheeks.
"Breathe."
Her stomach twisted. She coughed. Something warm struck the white porcelain. Katarine froze, then coughed again. More blood from her mouth. It ran in thin crimson ribbons toward the drain. For several seconds she simply stared. Then her knees gave out. Supposedly a powerful Jedi Master, and the investigator who had crawled through tombs, survived wars, buried brothers, lovers, friends, entire lifetimes, was nothing but a weakened husk.
She slid down the side of the sink until she was sitting on the cold floor. Katarine drew her knees against her chest. She wrapped both arms around them and shook.
"Teams Alpha and Bravo are in position."
The voice in her earpiece sounded impossibly far away. Rain hissed against duracrete. Local tactical officers lined the alleyway ahead, black armor glistening beneath flashing lights. Rifles were raised. Breaching charges prepared.
It was a simple narcotics raid. That was what it had been supposed to be. Then Katarine felt him. Darkness. Not metaphorical darkness. Not cruelty. Not criminality. The Dark Side. Someone inside the building carried it around them like perfume. Her fingers tightened around her saber.
"Master Ryiah?"
She couldn't answer. She was freezing. No. Burning. Both. Her teeth clicked together. Sweat slid beneath the collar of her jacket while gooseflesh covered her arms. Her hands trembled violently enough that she curled them into fists.
"Ma'am?"
"I'm fine."
The lie came easily. They always did. The doors blew inward. Everything after that became fragments. The shouting, smoke, blaster fire and bodies moving through doorways barely registered. Until a lightsaber igniting somewhere ahead. The sound it made seemed to travel through her bones. Katarine ignited her own weapon. Then she was moving. Too fast. Too violently. The first clash nearly drove the darksider backward through a wall.
He recovered, but she didn't give him time to think. Her saber came again, and again, and again. There was no patience, no measured Jedi defense, and no calm. Katarine fought like something starving. Every strike was meant to break. Every movement pressed closer. She wanted inside his guard. Closer to him. Closer to that intoxicating black current crawling through the room.
He laughed once, only once, then she slammed him against the floor. His saber skittered away. Katarine's knee pinned his chest. Her blade hovered at his throat. His eyes widened.
For several seconds neither of them moved. Katarine was panting. Her hair clung damply to her face. The Dark Side rolled from him.
Warm....
...Beautiful....
........Disgusting.....
Her head swam. She leaned closer, too close, until her eyes fluttered shut. She breathed in. She actually breathed him in, as if she might somehow drag the darkness through her lungs. The sensation hit her bloodstream like lightning. For one terrible heartbeat, everything inside her became quiet. There was no fever, no pain, no grief, and no guilt. There was just bliss. Pure dizzying, thought clouding bliss.
Her saber trembled beside his throat. Kill him. The thought was not hers. Or perhaps it was. That frightened her more than sniffing him ever had. Katarine's eyes snapped open. She stumbled backward so suddenly that she nearly fell.
"Secure him."
One of the officers stared at her.
"Master Jedi?"
"Secure him!"
They moved. Katarine turned away before anyone could see her hands shaking.
It was late at night, or maybe early morning. She didn't know anymore. The blankets had tangled around her legs. Katarine curled on her side aboard the Northstar, trembling so hard that the mattress shook beneath her.
Her muscles cramped. Her teeth hurt from clenching them. Every few minutes nausea rolled through her body and she stumbled toward the fresher before there was nothing left in her stomach to surrender. Still her body kept trying. Her forehead rested against the cool edge of the basin.
"Stop."
She whispered it to herself, to the mutation, to the blood, and to Him.
"Please."
There was no answer. Only hunger. It had changed. That frightened her most. The Dark Side used to satisfy it. Contact with darkness had once brought relief. A terrible relief, certainly, but relief nonetheless. Now the sensation faded almost as soon as it came. It faded in minutes, sometimes seconds,, leaving behind something worse than what had existed before. It's wake left a deeper emptiness, and a louder craving.
She thought about the darksider beneath her saber from the raid. She thought about leaning toward him, about the smell of rain and sweat and scorched fabric. She thought about that brief, perfect silence inside her skull.
She hated herself for remembering it. She wanted it again. Her entire body convulsed. Katarine gripped the edge of the bed through another wave of nausea, another shiver, and another prayer she wasn't certain anyone was listening to anymore.
The cure was worse than the disease.
That realization settled over her slowly. The Sith's blood had not freed her from the darkness. It had taught her body to need something else. Something stronger. Something only He possessed.
Jutrand turned beneath the Northstar like a dark jewel. Katarine stood alone before the viewport. She had been there for nearly an hour. Maybe longer. The planet drifted beneath her while distant stars burned cold against the black. Somewhere below was the Black Pyramid.
Adamantinarx. His temple. His laboratory. His altar. His mouth.
Katarine pressed one hand against the viewport. The trembling had returned with tiny movements at first. They were barely noticeable, but soon they would grow worse.
She knew the pattern now. Fever….Pain….Nausea….Hunger…..Madness.....And somewhere beneath all of it, desire.
Her reflection floated over the planet below, pale, hollow-eyed, and haunted. She had spent her entire life learning that darkness came in many forms. Sometimes it wore armor. Sometimes it carried a red blade. Sometimes it murdered worlds. Sometimes it smiled beautifully and told you it could make the pain stop.
The cruelest demons did not drag people into Hell. They made Hell feel like home.
Katarine closed her eyes. She thought of Ellion. Of the life she had lost. Of the Light she had tried so desperately to crawl back toward. She wanted to be strong for him. She hated the horror that festered inside her veins. She hated that she had to keep Eli at arm's length, determined not to let him get involved in this mess. All she wanted was to go back to the life she had before the freeze, before she had ever assumed Ellion was dead in the first place. All she wanted was her love story.
Then her thoughts drifted toward the Black Pyramid, toward the ancient monster waiting beneath its shadow. Her thoughts drifted toward crimson blood, and toward the quiet it brought. Her lips parted. A faint, humorless laugh escaped her. How fitting. She had spent centuries refusing to kneel before Sith, and now she had come voluntarily.
Katarine opened her eyes. The Black Pyramid waited below. A church for damned things. But she was so terribly tired of being hungry.
Her fingers moved across the navigation controls. The Northstar began its descent. She told herself she was going because she wanted answers, because she needed the biot removed, because she would force Him to undo whatever he had done, because she was still a Jedi, and because she was still in control.
They were all beautiful lies.
The truth pulsed beneath her skin with every beat of her poisoned heart. She was going back to the devil, because the devil had made himself her medicine.
Katarine Ryiah had come to Him for unholy communion.
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