"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, Mara—to 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 see—and feel—her 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 name —Ben, Ben, Ben—drowned 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, and—hungry.

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.

She was his aunt. She was family. When his role in her death became known—it had to be when, but not now, not anytime soon—the shock and hatred would tear apart what was left of the Skywalker and Solo families.

Maybe even Niathal, and all the others who understood that securing peace was a dirty business, would be disgusted.

I just killed my aunt. I grew up with her. She was there for me. We fought a war together.

I have to face her son. I have to face Ben.

What have I done ?

His stomach rumbled. How could he possibly be hungry at a time like this?

He will immortalize his love.

Stupid knotted tassels, all kinds of ancient Sith prophecies that would come to pass when the new Dark Lord was ready to take up his mantle and usher in a golden age of justice, order, and peace. The key had been turned—and this was what the prophecy was supposed to mean—by Jacen killing what he most loved.

He'd killed Mara, and Nelani, and Fett's daughter, and chaotic unjust democracy, and he loved none of those. He'd tried to kill Lumiya more than once. She seemed to think that was part of the job description for Sith acolytes.

So Jacen didn't believe it. And if Mara hadn't been trying to kill him to begin with, he would have seen it even more as a life thrown carelessly away.

The fabric of existence didn't seem to have changed enough. That shift should have been cataclysmic, and although he was too much of a pragmatist to think he could raise his fists to the sky and call down lightning to energize a mighty soul, he expected to be able to taste the spiritual and existential transformation.

He was afraid. However certain he'd been a few hours ago that Mara was to be the one destined to die, it didn't make sense in the context of the prophecy. He didn't feel different, either. Did that mean he still had to kill someone else? He'd been so certain it would all be over now.

The sense of anticlimax was almost enough to make him sob.

Then he felt a presence. He leaned his head against the side of the cockpit canopy, and gazing up at him from the nightmarish planet surrounding his fighter was Lumiya.

Jacen popped the seal. "I'm surprised you could be bothered to come and find me, after what happened."

"You now need to be seen." Lumiya had a new serenity about her. As ever, she still seemed to take no offense at him for trying to kill her again. "Your new existence has started, Dark Lord."

"Really?" The pain in his shoulder gnawed at him like an animal tearing his flesh. "I don't feel very lordly."

"I assure you it's done. I felt it."

She might have been humoring him. He shifted in his seat to ease the assortment of bruises. "I'll be looking for further proof."

"Stop arguing with the Force and pay attention to what you have to do next. Luke Skywalker arrived at Hapes a couple of hours ago and they're looking for evidence. And Niathal is griping bitterly about your being AWOL."

"They won't find me."

"That's not what I mean. Your trip to the Royal Court, a subject I will take to my grave by the way, needs to be smoothed out in terms of credibility. Sooner or later, it'll emerge that you were in the Hapes Cluster, and that Mara knew that."

"How?"

"May I alarm you?"

"Can you alarm me any more? Is it possible?"

"Mara had a conversation with Hapan Fleet Ops while in Hapan space about your presence on Hapes. I intercepted it, which is one reason why I