Serria23 Thank you!

Ewan's girl I understand. And thank you so much for your review.

Athena Leigh And it doesn't get happier any time soon…well, a little bit, I guess. Thanks for reading!

Three: Barricades

I used to be able to measure time without a digital read-out or glance at the rigid tick of the old-fashioned minute hand. The rise and setting of the sun was within me, all stages of night I could name with the drapes closed.

But that sense has dulled to bluntness. Now, there is but a single division of the hours, strict light or dark.

And of those, the latter is what has stayed with me. It could be seconds or hours from daybreak, all I know is that it is night. All I feel is the night, without movement, without birdsong, without illumination.

I'm lying here on the dirty cell floor, the glow rods shut off. A thick black sky encompasses me, though the ceiling is solid.

It has been one night, begun when my head fell to the satin pillow in that Ejhlon suite. And it doesn't matter when the dawn comes. I carry the recollection of the night's quiet cruelty even then.

I don't turn my head, but slowly move my eyes from the decay above me to the bars. I can remember bouts of insomnia, my gaze wandering through the moon-tinted objects in my quarters, staring until their shapes twisted with my weary imagination. A pile of clothes could, at a certain angle, appear to be a face with a huge, gaping mouth—later revealed as a sleeve.

My eyes are on the bars.

And the bars remain as they are. Unmovable, immutable.

I would have expected my ever-tired mind to create an illusion, a half-mirage from the haze of exhaustion that would transform the long, steel rods into something else. Perhaps amusing. Or disturbing.

From the claustrophobia, from the endless stretch of fevered boredom, I would have expected something.

Not these gray strips in the dark, holding me in, conforming my mind and unyielding to the pull of the palest fantasy.

Here I am, wide awake while others slumber, hoping I haven't gone crazy because I'm not seeing things.

What would everyone at the Temple think of THAT?

I clamp my eyes shut. A forbidden word, nearly as searing as his name.

I don't allow myself to finish the thought.

Instead, I return my focus to the bars. They offer an interesting conundrum. Seeped deep into their core is a powerful Force-suppressor that prevents me from so much as levitating a pebble. But those self-same bars, within my mind, cannot block the memory of the Force. I cannot forget the warmth of it, the unifying strength that bound me to the Universe's vibrations, and whispered a beautiful, guiding aria while glass shattered or worlds crumbled. The miracle that connected my heart to another—

Despite my efforts, I cannot forget.

Although, after months of detachment from it, I have halted some instincts. When my head aches, I don't place a finger to my temple and wait for the healing energy. When the guard stands before me, I don't attempt mind suggestion. And when I wonder where this bitter destiny has led him, I don't reach for that place in my soul where his Force presence once resided.

If I do, I touch upon a worse darkness than that around me.

I roll onto my other shoulder, away from the glinting barricade.

But I can still see it. With my eyes closed, I can see it.