Chapter 8: A Gift of Submission
The scent of the ship—ozone, charged air, and them—still clung to Luminara’s skin beneath the fresh, rough-spun robes. She had scrubbed herself, but the memory of the taste, that sharp, claiming flavor, lived under her tongue. Barriss’s question hung in the silent corridor between their quarters. Would you like more?
The answer had been a silent, desperate nodding. Barriss had simply smiled, that cool, possessive curl of her lips, and given her a task. A location. A time. “Wear your robes. The full traditional dress. Look like the Master you were. Then go to the marked coordinates on Level 17. Ask for Kael. Show him the parchment.”
Now, standing before a nondescript doorway in a transient merchant sector, Luminara felt the parchment crackle in her inner pocket like a live wire. The parlor, when she pushed the door open, was a sharp contrast to the ship’s sterile gloom. It was bathed in the golden, dusty light of a dying sun, filtering through a high, cracked transparisteel window. The air was warm, thick with the smell of herbal disinfectant, spiced tea, and underlying notes of ink and blood. Woven rugs in faded reds and blues covered the metal deck-plating, and a single lantern flickered on a wall, casting long, dancing shadows.
A Twi’lek male looked up from behind a worn wooden table. His skin was a deep cerulean, his head-tails draped over shoulders corded with muscle and faded ink. His eyes, yellow and shrewd, assessed her instantly—the elegant robes, the dignified posture, the anxiety she couldn’t quite mask. “You’re not from around here,” he stated, his voice a gravelly rumble. He didn’t sound friendly. He sounded like a man who knew trouble when it walked in.
“I was told to ask for Kael,” Luminara said, her voice quieter than she intended.
“You found him.” He didn’t move. “What does a Jedi need with a needle-and-ink man in a place like this?”
The identification was a blow. She had hoped the robes would read as merely monastic. She forced her chin up. “I am no longer a Jedi. I require your service.”
Kael’s eyes narrowed. He gestured to the single chair opposite him. “Sit. Let’s see the design.”
Luminara moved, the robes whispering around her. She sat, the wood hard and unforgiving. For a moment, she simply stared at the table’s surface, stained with countless droplets of ink in a galaxy of colors. Her hand went to her pocket, withdrew the folded parchment. It felt impossibly heavy. She slid it across to him.
He unfolded it with thick, stained fingers. On it, Barriss had written two lines of script in precise, elegant Mirialan. The characters were beautiful, flowing. Kael studied them, his head cocked. “Don’t read this. Pretty, though. Placement?”
Luminara’s mouth was dust. She untied the sash of her outer robe, letting it fall open. Then, with trembling hands, she parted the inner tunic, exposing her stomach and the space beneath her breasts. She pointed first to the soft, green skin just under the curve of each breast. “The first line. Here. Arcing between them.” Her finger drifted down, over the gentle swell of her abdomen, coming to rest just below her navel. “The second line. Here.”
Kael looked from the parchment to her skin, then back to her face. His expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes hardened. “You understand this is permanent. This ink, it’s made from crushed nightblossom thorn and bantha fat. It binds with the dermal layer. It’s not coming out, not even with a laser.”
“I understand.”
“And you want words you won’t even tell me the meaning of, in a place you’ll only see in a mirror or feel under someone’s hand.” He leaned back, crossing his arms. “This is a mark of ownership. A brand. You running from someone, or to someone?”
The question was too perceptive. Luminara felt a flash of defensive anger, the ghost of her old authority. It died as quickly as it came, extinguished by the memory of the grating under her knees. “The transaction is for ink, not analysis.”
Kael snorted, a short, humorless sound. He pushed himself up from the table. “Fine. Your credits are good. Lie on the bench. Get comfortable. This will take time.”
The tattooing bench was cold metal layered with a thin pad. Luminara lay back, her robes falling open fully. The golden light traced the lines of her body, highlighting the faint bruises from the cargo hold, the softness of her stomach, the arc of her hips. She felt utterly, terrifyingly exposed. This was different from being naked before Barriss. This was clinical. This was forever.
Kael worked with a methodical, silent efficiency. He shaved the fine hair from the areas, wiped her skin with a cold, astringent solution that made her flinch. He mixed the ink, a deep, jet black, in a small ceramic dish. The needle, a fine cluster of points on a powered hand-piece, hummed to life. The sound was a high, insectile whine.
“Breathe in,” he said. “Hold it. Now breathe out slowly.”
He didn’t wait for her to comply. The needle touched her skin.
The pain was immediate and shocking. It was not the clean, sharp pain of a blade, nor the deep, spreading ache of a blow. It was a hot, insistent scratching, a relentless vibration that felt like it was etching directly onto her bone. She gasped, her fingers curling into fists at her sides. Her eyes screwed shut.
“Keep breathing,” Kael grunted, not unkindly. “Or you’ll pass out.”
She tried. Each breath hitched as the needle traced the first complex character under her left breast. The vibration seemed to travel inward, resonating in her ribs. Her mind scrambled for a focal point, and it found Barriss’s face. Not the cold, smiling Barriss of the ship, but the younger Barriss, her apprentice, frowning in concentration over a lightsaber form. The memory was a sweet, piercing agony of its own.
The needle moved, line by relentless line. Kael’s hand was steady, his other hand stretching her skin taut. The pain settled into a brutal rhythm, a burning tapestry being woven into her flesh. She thought of the meaning of the words. Barriss had made her recite them before leaving the ship.
The first line, arching under her breasts: Her Will, My Air.
The second, below her navel, a permanent whisper over her womb: Her Pleasure, My Purpose.
Each pass of the needle drove the phrases deeper, from concept into law. This wasn’t just ink. It was a covenant. A physical manifestation of the addiction that had already taken root in her soul. The pain became a perverse kind of penance, a dedicated suffering that thrilled her because of who had demanded it. She moaned, low in her throat, and wasn’t sure if it was from pain or a dark, cresting wave of emotion.
Kael paused, wiping away a trickle of blood and excess ink with a cool cloth. “Halfway. You’re taking it well.” He said it like an observation of fact.
Luminara opened her eyes. Sweat beaded on her forehead and upper lip. She watched the shadow of his hand moving against the lantern-lit wall, a monster creating a masterpiece. The burning intensity under her navel was worse, the skin more sensitive. Each vibration seemed to echo directly into her core, a cruel, rhythmic mimicry of a different kind of touch. Arousal, thick and shameful, pooled beneath the pain. She bit her lip hard enough to taste copper.
Time lost meaning. There was only the whine of the needle, the smell of her own singed skin and ink, the escalating riot of sensation in her nerve endings. She drifted on it, surrendering to the process as she had surrendered to Barriss. This, too, was an act of service. This permanent degradation was the most honest vow she could ever make.
Finally, the whine ceased. Kael set the hand-piece down with a definitive click. He cleaned the area one last time, the cloth coming away stained with black and red. He applied a thin, clear sealant that felt cool for a blissful second before the fire beneath reasserted itself.
“Done,” he said. He held up a polished piece of durasteel, a makeshift mirror. “Look.”
Luminara pushed herself up on her elbows, her body trembling with exertion and aftershock. She looked.
The black lines stood out starkly against her green skin, vivid and angry, slightly raised. The script was beautiful, elegant, a work of art inscribed on a living canvas. Seeing the words made them real in a way they hadn’t been before. They were no longer just an idea. They were a part of her anatomy now, as integral as her bones. Her Will, My Air. Her Pleasure, My Purpose. She stared, breathless, a chaotic storm of horror and vertiginous triumph raging inside her.
Kael was watching her face. He saw the storm. He began cleaning his tools, his movements brusque. “Credits are on the table. Keep the sealant on for a standard day. Don’t soak it. It’ll weep.”
Luminara nodded, numb. She carefully closed her robes, the fabric whispering over the fresh, furious ink. Every brush of cloth was a reminder. She stood, her legs unsteady, and placed a small stack of credit chits on the stained wood.
As she turned to leave, Kael spoke again, not looking up from his cleaning. “Whoever she is… she must hate you a lot. Or love you in a way that’s just about the same thing.”
Luminara paused at the doorway, the golden light haloing her. The pain throbbed in time with her heartbeat, a constant, thrilling reminder.
“Yes,” she whispered, almost to herself. Then she stepped out into the dim corridor, the door sighing shut behind her, sealing the parlor and its knowing silence away. She walked, each step sending a fresh pulse from the inscriptions. She wasn’t returning to the ship. She was carrying its core truth back with her, etched into her skin, a map to her own surrender written in a language only two people in the galaxy would understand.