Dad lifted his head to me. Dried blood coated his pristine blue uniform where he clutched his side. His eyes flicked to the corpse of VB-35 at my feet, and anguish crinkled his brow. He mouthed,Love you.
I wanted to cry, but I bit the inside of my cheek to steel myself. I wasn’t going to give Val the satisfaction. I’d already let my emotions get the better of me.
Someone I loved had already died.
From the shuttle came half a dozen stormtroopers, blasters at the ready. At the center of them was a tall figure clad in black, a nightmarish mask concealing his face. A chill shivered down my spine at the sight of him. Beside him walked a redheaded officer in a military uniform, with a jacket and cap, all as black as night. He pulled at his cuffs in a fussy sort of way, clearly knowing how important he looked flanked by men in armor.
“What backwater planet did you bring us to, Officer Quay?” the redhead asked in an unmistakable and insufferably snide voice. It was the same voice I’d heard outside Val’s room that night on theStarfarer. I guessed this washis commanding officer. “I hope, for your sake, you have what we need?”
“General Hux.” Val greeted him with a salute, fist to his chest—the salute of the Empire. “This girl knows where it is. We’ll tear apart the whole ship if we must.”
This girl—he hadn’t even called me his sister. Maybe that was for the best.
Daaric, from his spot in the lineup, barked a laugh. “And you know what you’ll find? Suitcases, scared guests, and commemorative Pieces of Alderaan, but you folks refuse to learn from history, don’t you?” Just as he finished the question, one of Val’s men slammed the butt of his blaster against Daaric’s mouth and told him to shut up.
I gave a start. “Stop! Don’t hurt them!”
The redheaded general—Hux, was it?—bristled. “And who areyouto order us?”
Beside him, the tall figure held up a hand in silence, then turned his abysmal gaze on me.“Let the girl speak.”
The voice was deep and terrifying, not quite organic, not quite mechanical, either. I wondered what was beneath that mask—a droid? Some sort of sentient monster? The coldness, the flatness of his tone, made me want to run—as far and as fast as I could—but I was frozen to the spot in petrifying fear.
“I warned you,” Val hissed.
Daaric silently implored me not to, while Kotti and Maeve ducked their heads, afraid to watch. They all saw VB-35 at my feet. They all knew the danger was very, very real. Dad kept his silence, his stony face all I needed to see. He knew stories like I knew stories, and despite telling Sian that I looked for the good in everything, I knew that not every story ended well.
Not every one of them could.
But just as I was about to tell Dad how sorry I was, a glint in the distance caught my eye. Metal? But metals corroded and turned to dust from this planet’s pollen, so it couldn’t be part of a ruin. And the only other metal objects here were the droids, theStarfarer, theUpsilon-class command shuttle, and—
Starstall.
I faced the warlord and raised my chin high.
I was my father’s child, after all: rebel scum.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Monster
“I know where the lightsaber is,” I said. Cold sweat slid down my back. I tried to look calm, but I was staring down death and I knew it.
But what would happen if this strange fringe group got their way? Solidified their lie about Luke Skywalker and how he’d abandoned the galaxy—and how everyone else would abandon them, too? Because stories, who told them, and who heard them mattered, woven together in a tapestry called history.
Maybe Luke Skywalker had abandoned the galaxy, but it didn’t mean everyone would.
Good wasn’t always easy. It wasn’t always safe. It meant that sometimes the people you loved died in terrible, awful ways.
Good, as it turned out, was the hard choice.
Goodwas the long way around.
Tears burned at the edges of my eyes.
It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t fair.
But I knew that. Good wasn’t fair. Good did not grow from nothing, just as evil did not bloom unattended. But even as I repeated that—It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair—I knew what I had to do.
