And it was getting light now. Coruscant’s towers and spires were silhouetted against a pink-and-amber sunrise.
Of all the dreaded things that came to Luke in those dreams and visions, the one that plagued him most was the feeling of familiarity.
He had felt something like this before. He just couldn’t pin it down.
JACEN SOLO’S PRIVATE APARTMENT. CORUSCANT.
I wish you were here.
Jacen could reach out and touch Tenel Ka in the Force, and at that moment he would have given nearly anything to see her and his daughter, Allana, again. He closed his eyes and saw Tenel Ka-the same smile as when he had first left her, cradling the baby-and let his presence expand and merge gently with hers. He felt the warmth spread up from his stomach into his chest: she had felt him, and returned the touch.
Baby? Allana was four now; she was a little girl, walking and talking. Every time he sneaked a visit to see her, she’d grown a lot. Did she ask about her daddy? No, she was Hapan royalty, and even at that age she would have been schooled to remain silent about her parentage. How tall was she now? Was she aware of her Force powers yet? He had endless questions, the kind that a father who saw his daughter daily never had to ask.
I’m not there for her. I’m not seeing her grow up. I don’t even have a holo of her.
It was much easier to reach out when he levitated like this, legs crossed, hands in his lap. Without the sensory distraction of a seat beneath him or the fabric of the chair against his hands, he could focus totally on the ebb and flow of the Force around and within him.
He let the warmth fade before it became a lasting beacon for … he wasn’t sure yet. But Tenel Ka would understand that he had to be discreet even in the Force these days. He drew his touch back to the here and now. It felt like a final goodbye.
Jacen wasn’t sure just how much Lumiya could detect, and his secret family had to be protected.
But the person he most wanted to have at his side then was his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, a man he had never known but who had stood where Jacen stood now-on the threshold of becoming Sith.
Once crossed, there was no return. It wasn’t one of his explorations of Aing-Tii flow-walking or some other arcane Force skill that he could dabble in and withdraw from when it suited him. It was everything he had been raised to reject; and yet what Lumiya had shown him was so true, so inevitable, and so necessary that he had no choice but to believe it.
But can I believe Lumiya?
Her skills were prodigious. He’d been taken aback by the Force illusion in her asteroid habitat. Lumiya might well have been a true Sith follower fighting to prove to Jacen that history was a one-sided story written by the Jedi; or she might have been a clever, manipulative, and infinitely patient woman with her own agenda, seeing Jacen as a useful stepping-stone along the way.
But the part about the Sith way being a force for order and peace if used selflessly … it’s true. I feel it. I know it-and I wish I didn’t.
But is it me?
Jacen still scoured his heart and soul for the slightest sign that his motivation was ambition. He could only feel fear and dread: he didn’t want this burden.
That’s why it’s been given to you.
He lowered himself until he was sitting normally, and took deep breaths until he felt ready to reenter the everyday world. But given the choice right then between a chance to be with Tenel Ka and a moment to speak to Anakin Skywalker — yes, he would have opted for the latter. Just a few minutes, to ask this one question: Did you feel the doubt and reluctance that I feel before you crossed that line?
You had a secret love, too, didn’t you?
Jacen’s state of reluctant acceptance was punctured all too often now by wondering if he was falling into the same trap as his grandfather. He needed to know if it was different, because the outcome two generations ago had been disastrous for the galaxy. He just needed to be absolutely sure.
Many other beings in the galaxy’s history had believed they were the Chosen One of their particular culture, born to create order, and all of them had clearly been wrong. Jacen never forgot that.
But while he was wondering, events weren’t waiting for him and the war was coming closer. He needed to talk to Admiral Niathal. She was a hard-liner: ample proof that you couldn’t judge every member of a species by its general reputation. For a peace-loving people, the Mon Calamari had produced an awful lot of tough naval officers.
But you couldn’t maintain peace without the capacity for war. Everywhere he looked, Jacen saw the certain truth of Lumiya’s words. The Sith way was neither evil nor dangerous in the hands of the sincere. He just wasn’t sure about her sincerity.
And he had to be sure of his own.