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levtram arrived at the boarding berth and opened its doors, and panicked passengers from the platform began to push inside without giving anyone on board a chance to debark. Luke took a moment to look around, then—when he did not see any trace of the tattooed man from the pedramp—he and Vestara pushed into the panicked crowd.
    As they entered the glow from the lights inside the car, Luke was surprised to see that there were tears welling in Vestara’s eyes.
    “What did he do to make you hate him so much?”
    “
Hate
him?” Vestara looked up to meet Luke’s gaze. “I didn’t hate him. He was always very kind to me.”
    Luke frowned. “Then you used his own shikkar because …”
    “Because I didn’t have mine, and we have a war to win.” Vestara rose onto her tiptoes and whispered into his ear. “I did it for the Jedi cause, Master Skywalker.”

S HE CAME TO HIM IN DARKNESS, AS HIS TORMENTORS ALWAYS DID, A cold malevolence waiting at the foot of his cot. Wynn Dorvan did not move, did not change his breathing, did not even test the restraints holding his limbs splayed and immobile. He merely closed his eyes and willed himself to escape into sleep.
    “Come now, Wynn.” The voice was female and familiar, a voice he had heard before. “You
know
you won’t be rid of me that easily.”
    The cell grew bright as the illumination panels activated overhead, and Wynn squeezed his eyes shut against the brilliance. It was impossible to mark the passing of time in the ceaseless darkness between torture sessions, but the pain stabbing through his head suggested it had been many days since his last interrogation.
    “Wynn, you mustn’t keep me waiting,” the voice said. Something cold and slimy slithered around his bare ankle. “Not your Beloved Queen of the Stars.”
    Wynn’s eyes popped open, filling his head with an explosion of painand light, and he raised his head. Standing at the foot of his cot he saw two silhouettes, one a female human and one … something else.
    “That’s better.” The voice seemed to be coming from the silhouette on the left—a hideous, sinuate thing with tentacles instead of arms, with blazing white stars where there should have been eyes.
Abeloth
. “I was afraid you were going to make me summon Lady Korelei.”
    The memories of his recent Force torture only grew stronger as time passed, and the mere mention of Korelei’s name sent an electric bolt of fear shooting through his body. He ignored it—just as he ignored the inner voice telling him to scream and beg for mercy. The slightest hint of weakness would only bring Korelei back all the sooner, to pry from him the few secrets he had not yet surrendered—his most important secrets, the ones he was determined to carry into oblivion with him.
    And so Wynn said the only thing he
could
say, the one thing that just
might
get him killed before Korelei returned: “Are you real?” He let his head drop back to the cot. “You
can’t
be real. You’re too blasted ugly.”
    The silhouette remained silent for a moment, and had Wynn been a Jedi, he was fairly certain he would have felt her anger building in the Force. But when Abeloth spoke, her voice remained cool and in control, and Wynn knew he would not escape his torment so easily.
    “I am very real, Wynn—more real than you can know,” she said. “And I grow weary of your tricks, as do the Sith. Lady Korelei is ready to employ the necromantic option.”
    Wynn managed a sort of nod. “Let her.” As he spoke, the light started to grow less painful, and when he glanced toward the silhouette it began to seem less hideous and sinuate—more substantial and vaguely human. “If Lady Korelei could get truth from a dead man, she wouldn’t be wasting time trying to extract it from a living one.”
    “So you
have
been lying to her?”
    “No one can lie to a Sith Lord,” he said. “That’s what she keeps telling me.”
    “You might be an exception,” the woman said. “You are