Kissed by Fire: Cal Kestis

Chapter 32

The headache Y/n felt as she was awoken made her squeeze her eyes shut before opening them. She let out a groan, attempting to reach up to her head to feel it, but paused at the struggle. Opening her eyes fully, she gazed at her wrists to see they were tightly encased in a pair of binders, her skin already itching from the feel of the metal around them. Looking around her, she saw she was stuck in a small room, the only sign of it being a cell was the ray shield on the door and the bench that stuck out from the wall to serve as a cot.

"Damn it," she muttered to herself, trying to twist her cuffs to make them remotely more comfortable. Standing from her cot, she approached the ray shield, looking out both directions to see two stormtroopers guarding her door. "Hey, do either of you happen to have a glass of water. I'm parched."

"Quiet, scum," the one on the right snapped back at her. He put his hand up to where his ear would be and said, "Alert Doctor Bault and General Bault, the prisoner is awake."

Who the hell is 'Bault'? Y/n thought to herself, stepping away from the ray shield. She would have thought they'd bring in her mother, the infamous Ivaah Novar, to assess the situation of her wayward daughter. "All this search and she doesn't even come to see me herself," Y/n laughed slightly, shaking her head. Looking back to the door, she called out one more, "I really am quite thirsty, fellas. I thought it was your duty to keep me alive."

"Hey, we said shut up," the other trooper growled at her. "Jeez. Prisoners these days just don't know discipline."

"What can you expect? They're all rebels and cheaters. Enemies of the Empire," Trooper 1 shrugged. Y/n always found the conversations between troopers to be rather amusing when she snuck past them on missions.

"Yeah, but you'd think the idea of being tortured would keep 'em quite for a little while," Trooper 2 groaned, playing with his blaster.

"Thick skulls. All of them," Trooper 1 shook his head.

Y/n couldn't believe her ears. The moronic conversations of stormtroopers would always astound her. "Hey, you know there's something called courtesy?" she spoke up once more, and heard the sighs of both the troopers. "It wouldn't hurt to show some."

"How many time do we need to tell you? Be quiet!" Trooper 2 exclaimed, holding his blaster tighter in his hand.

"That'll be all, gentlemen," a new voice called, and both the troopers straightened up in their positions.

"Sir," both of them spoke, and Y/n raised a brow when she saw the back of someone's uniform come into view.

"We'll take it from here."

Now that was a voice she knew all too well.

Y/n watched as the ray shield was lowered, and considered her options of running through the troopers and out of wherever she was. The odds were not in her favor, but there was no harm in trying, unless she wanted a blaster bolt in her back. Sitting stiffer against her cot, she watched as a man walked in first. He wore the tell-tale grey uniform of a general with his six blue tiles on his badge. His face was weathered, and his eyes were a terrifying brown, almost black. His dark hair was slicked back underneath his cap. Behind him entered a face she wished she would never see again.

Ivaah Novar's face had not changed in the few years Y/n had left, but just enough of her was different for Y/n to barely recognize her mother. She stood taller, and there was a malicious look in her eyes that hid behind the smile she gave. And, of course, the little scar on her upper lip, which were painted a deep red. Her short black hair was held tightly back into a bun. "Y/n, my dear, I finally found you," she breathed, but Y/n could sense the underlying anger in her tone.