“What have you done? What the stang have you done to me?” But she was already losing her balance as the poison paralyzed her, and she slumped to one side as he got to his feet, staring up at him more with shock than rage or fear.
“The prophecy.” It didn’t matter now: the toxincomplex, relatively painlesswas circulating through her body. “Don’t fight it. No healing trance. Just let go …”
Mara tried to get up but sank back to sit on her heels, with an expression as if she’d forgotten something and was trying to remember. She crumpled against the wall. Jacen had never felt such relief. It didn’t have to be Allana, or Tenel Ka, or even Ben. It was over, all over.
“What?” Mara said. She tried to put her fingers to her lips, shaking, but her hand fell back to her lap. She looked at them as if expecting to see blood.
Jacen suppressed his instinct to help her. “It’s my destiny, Marato be a Sith Lord, and bring order and justice. I had to kill you to do it. You’re going to save so many people, Mara. You’ve saved Ben. You’ve saved Allana, too. It’s not a waste, believe me.”
“You’re … as vile as he was.”
Jacen could hardly understand what she was saying. “Who?”
“Palpatine.”
“It’s not like that,” he said. He had to make her see what was happening. It was important. He owed her that revelation. She’d made the sacrifice, although he was now starting to wonder what that meant for whatever love he had to give up. “It’s not about ambition. It’s about the galaxy, about peace. It’s about building a different world.”
She stared back at him, and now he could seeand feelher disgust. He wasn’t sure if it was aimed at him or at herself.
Jacen hurt. He was starting to feel the full extent of his injuries, and he needed to heal himself. He also needed to get out of this tunnel.
Mara was breathing heavily now, one hand slack in her lap but the other still clenching and unclenching as if trying to form a fist to give him one final punch. Her vivid green eyes were still bright with relentless purpose. He knew he would try to forget them every day of his life.
“You think … you’ve won,” she said, slurred, but utterly lucid and unafraid. “But Luke will crush you … and I refuse … to let you … destroy the future … for my Ben.”
Jacen sat and waited, almost expecting a prophecy from her to help him make sense of what he’d done. But after a few moments, he felt the final discharge of elemental energy that every Force-user would notice and comprehend.
Ben was the last word she ever spoke.
KAVAN
Lumiya felt the Force shift subtly like tectonic plates in motion. She hadn’t realized that the decisive moment would feel quite like that.
“Ship,” she said, “The new Dark Lord needs me. Follow him.” Then she left to prepare for death, intending to die well.
KAVAN
Ben suddenly couldn’t hear the voice of the Sith sphere. His own nameBen, Ben, Bendrowned out every other sound, even though deep in his head, it was quieter than a whisper, a summons and a farewell for him alone. He forgot about Lumiya, and stumbled toward the source of the voice, blinded by tears. “Mom!” he yelled. “Mom!”
PERLEMIAN TRADE ROUTE
In the cockpit of his StealthX heading for Hapes, Luke Skywalker felt a hand brush his hair, and as he reached out involuntarily to touch it, he knew his world had ended.
chapter twenty-two
I don’t know what’s happening, Mand’alor, but the amount of secure GA comm traffic flying around the Hapan Cluster now has to be seen to be believed. Major panic ongoing. Stand by.
Goran Beviin, surveillance expert, reporting back from the nearby Roche asteroid field prior to launch of the Bes’uliik
GAG STEALTHX, LAID UP ON ZIOST
Jacen really didn’t know where else to go. He stared at the cockpit panel facing him, knowing that he should have been back on Coruscant at least twenty hours ago, and that Niathal would be cursing him roundly.
He was alone, in creased black fatigues, in agonizing pain, andhungry.
This wasn’t the ascension of the Lord of the Sith that he’d expected. He wondered what ordinary people thought happened when the course of history swung on a single pivotal act. They probably didn’t envisage that their future was now in the hands of a tired, sweaty man who kept thinking he needed a shave, and almost unable to believe that he’d
Killed Mara Jade Skywalker.
Killing didn’t get any easier. He was just getting better at it.
But it still didn’t make sense. He rubbed his cheek, and the stubble rasped audibly under his fingers. Mara hadn’t been the most precious thing in his life. In recent weeks, she’d changed from being his only friend to just someone else who didn’t trust him and was getting in his way.