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He had asked where Liara was and Benezia stumbled.
Her mouth opened to form the words, ready to acquiesce, but no sound had come out. Saren’s gaze was like a weight dropped onto her shoulders, crushing her as his impatience grew. She tried again, but her knees buckled instead, weakened by exhaustion after days awake on his ship. Sovereign, with its endless pathways and its own heartbeat, the one that pulses in the back of her mind until she can barely remember her own name.
“Tell me.”
His words had teeth, dripped venom. They would swallow her whole if she answered and devour her from within if she didn’t. Neither was truly death; that would bring peace, which she wasn’t permitted.
There was no pride left to sacrifice either, not when her acolytes now spoke with Saren’s voice. Shiala, who slept beside her in the dark cradle designated as their bed, muttered under her breath about planets they had never seen. The cold waters of Ilos. The singing nests of Suen. They were lost. She was lost too, but there had been a last shred of hope in knowing Liara was safe.
Her silence was too much. His boots scraped against the floor as he turned, over fractals etched into metal.
“I’ll find her myself. Useless wretch.”
You were kind once. Those words don’t make it past Benezia’s lips either as he leaves the room. Not because she couldn’t say them, but because she didn’t know if it was the truth. She remembered twenty years before, thinking the steel in his eyes was dedication instead of malice. A fraction of her lifetime, nearly half of Saren’s. Had she blinked and missed this?
The pressure in her skull didn’t alleviate with the Spectre’s absence. It had been a mild headache at first; she remembered Saren offering her a couch to rest on, some water. A phantom image persisted every time Benezia closed her eyes, shapes she couldn’t interpret. Now she saw it reflected on every wall, written beneath her skin.
But she hadn’t given him Liara. Not today.
She knew her resistance couldn’t last. Sovereign had been forcing her to stay awake, eroding at the barriers surrounding her mind with each passing hour. If she didn’t focus, her grasp on time slipped away, leaving what memories were left even hazier than before.
“Goddess, I miss you.” Benezia whispered.
She said it to the air, praying it would carry across space, across the stars. It wasn’t just one name on her lips, but many, all those she couldn’t voice without the ship whispering them to Saren.
“And I’m sorry.”
Slowly drawing her legs beneath her, she fell into the position for meditation, palms up and one atop the other. Her eyes closed. Pushing the presence away was like grabbing a sword by the blade to keep it from piercing her chest; dying by inches instead of in an instant.
But for a matter of seconds, it was gone.
Long enough to lock a piece of herself away, beyond subconscious thought. Enough to pray it was never found, that her last willing act in this life might cast a light into the future.
Benezia’s eyes opened, flooded with black. She smiled.