IT WAS THE FOURTH and final freighter haul that got to Thane.

He’d kept his head down, remained quiet, and made it off Kerev Doi easily enough. The ships he had boarded for the next few trips gave him no trouble, either. On a passenger ship, he would’ve had little privacy and an overly interested crew to deal with. On a freighter, however, the few extra berths were sold to workers who wanted cheap transport and no frills. Thane didn’t have to worry about being noticed there.

But when the last freighter came out of hyperspace near Jelucan, Thane grabbed his bag and headed for the disembarkation area. Long metal benches bolted to the walls had a few harnesses for those worried about a bumpy ride down; he strapped himself in and waited. Another passenger did the same—then another—and a fourth.

None of these people behaved markedly different than Thane himself. They wore the sort of nondescript clothing that could be purchased on almost any world. They showed no undue interest in the people around them.

And yet any one of them could be an Imperial spy.

The idea latched on to Thane so hard he could scarcely breathe. The woman with the long salt-and-pepper braid—had she just glanced at his face? The Ottegan, with his wide-set eyes—who knew what he might be observing? Or the Volpai there, with all the fingers on all four of his hands tapping at his data feed—was he reporting Thane to the authorities even now?

Everywhere else, Thane had known he possessed the advantage of surprise. There was no way for the Empire to predict his earlier moves, but they might have guessed he’d return to Jelucan. So someone could have traced him to that freighter. Or an entire platoon of stormtroopers might be waiting for him in the landing bay—

Instead, the freighter landed without incident. The other four passengers dispersed without even looking at Thane. He laughed at his paranoia as he shouldered his bag. You’re on familiar ground now. Soon you’ll feel like yourself again.

Yet he didn’t.

At first Thane believed he was only suffering from reverse culture shock, the strangeness of home after a long time away. Valentia, the grand city he’d admired as a boy—of course it would look small and provincial after he’d spent three years on Coruscant. If people seemed guarded and less friendly, probably that was because he was contrasting their reactions to the small boy he’d been with the more reserved reception they’d give an adult. And he was still on edge. His unease deepened the shadows.

But the longer he looked around, the more certain he was. His world had changed. The Empire had changed it.

The senatorial building everyone had been so proud of on the day Jelucan joined the Empire—that had been taken over by the military to sequester troops. Thane kept his distance, but he could tell that it was no short-term emergency measure. Already engineers were constructing a high surrounding wall, and the perimeter force field overhead glinted when sunlight broke through the gray sky.

Valentia might never have approached Coruscant’s polish and sophistication, but it had been a vibrant, bustling city. Now the entire place seemed more crowded and emptier at the same time. Ramshackle, makeshift shanties had been built next to the older, stone-carved buildings; these clearly served as housing for itinerant workers, who had come out of the mountains looking for new opportunities that never materialized.

Or had these people been forced out? Thane wasn’t sure. He could tell from the clothes they wore that both valley kindred and second-wavers were among the new vagabond population. Yet the two groups were harder to tell apart than they’d been before. Both the brilliant silks and plain homespun cloth had begun to be replaced by cheap mass-produced garments. A dense, stultifying sameness had settled over the land.

Even the entertainment was affected. Thane’s rented room stood on the higher floor of a building that also housed a cantina at ground level. When he was a boy, his father had sometimes taken him into such establishments, promising to have “just one drink.” So Thane had spent many long hours sitting in a far corner watching podraces or the spice-world holos he enjoyed so much.

The cantinas were rougher now—less neighborhood pub, more seedy bar. Most of the patrons were not local characters; outworlders seemed to have crowded them out. As Thane nursed his ale, he stared at the screens in disbelief. Every single program was Imperial propaganda of some kind or another: a documentary ostensibly about the Empire’s successful “building programs” on Thurhanna Minor (really enormous power facilities that squatted over once-pretty countryside) was broken up by recruiting calls for stormtroopers (“Discover adventure and serve your Empire!”) or news items about Emperor Palpatine receiving guests as he smiled and nodded. Worst of all was an ad for a special report scheduled to air soon, in which the “full extent of the treasonous acts of sedition on the planet Alderaan will finally be exposed!”

Thane had thought everyone would be talking about Alderaan. No one did. The silence about an entire Core World planet’s destruction told Thane more than any gossip would have. Everyone is thinking about it. Everyone is afraid. If the Empire would destroy a world as important and prosperous as Alderaan…no place in the galaxy was safe.

(The Imperial broadcasts were vague about the Death Star’s destruction, speaking only of an “unprecedented attack by the Rebel Alliance.” Thane had first thought the Empire would play it up as a rebel atrocity, but then he realized that it was more important for the populace to believe that the Empire could destroy another world at any moment.)

When he walked outside, he was disturbed even by the color of the sky. Jelucan’s atmosphere usually showed itself as more gray than blue, but the air had always been clear and sparkling, and the gray overhead had the sheen of a fine mineral. Now the skies were darker even when they were cloudless, as if expecting a storm that never came. Had the mining begun to affect the atmosphere?

Thane had argued with himself about whether or not to contact his family when he arrived. Little as his father cared for him and as much as his mother wanted to curry favor with the Empire, he couldn’t believe they’d actually turn him in. Even if they wouldn’t have protected him, they wouldn’t have wanted to endure the shame. At home he could have saved his credits, taken his time, and waited for Ciena.

He could even have ridden his old line down to the Fortress, tidied it up, made it nice. It seemed so right to meet her there again—

In the end, though, Thane had decided against contacting his parents. He had no need for his father’s drunken contempt or his mother’s outrage; least of all did he want to hear them talking about how Dalven was doing.

(Given the severe shortage of Imperial troops, even an oaf like Dalven had probably received a promotion. He’d be fool enough to take pride in it, too.)

But as the days went on, his spirits sunk lower. Ciena still hadn’t appeared. What if she’d tried to desert but been captured? The thought of her in jail, feeling shamed and hopeless, sickened him. (He didn’t give in to despair; Ciena was too smart, too capable to be easily caught. She’d wait until the moment was right, but that moment might not come for a while.) The scant funds Thane had managed to escape with had mostly gone to pay for his freighter trips. His rent on the tiny room already seemed like too much, and he was living on nothing but street food—thin slices of suspiciously sourced meat cooked on small makeshift grillers outside the shanties, or thin “stews” thickened with ground grain.

Like most cadets, Thane had dreamed of having a few days to sleep late, ignore military discipline, and do whatever he wanted. Yet without the strict framework he’d lived within for the past few years, he found himself rudderless—bewildered and irritated by more freedom than he knew what to do with. Instead of fulfilling his assigned tasks at a preset schedule, he did…nothing. Stubble appeared on his face as the beard suppressant wore off, and buying more didn’t seem worth the credits it would cost. Every night he had nightmares—about Alderaan, the Death Star, his father, or Ciena in danger. The only thing that separated him from the down-and-outers around him was that Thane didn’t spend all his money on ale, though by now he understood why some people did. With each day he sunk deeper into melancholy.

At first he’d thought it would be easy to find some kind of employment; there was always work for pilots, even unlicensed ones. But now he realized he couldn’t do that on Jelucan. The Empire’s presence there was too strong for a deserter to wander through the ports asking for a job. No doubt he could indenture himself to one of the less savory freighters that passed through—they never looked into people’s backgrounds—but that was only one step removed from selling himself into slavery.

Very few things seemed worth trying any longer. It felt as if his entire life were frozen in time, waiting for Ciena to arrive. And if she never came, he didn’t know what would become of him and didn’t much care.

Thane hit his limit one night about two weeks in, as he sprawled on his bed in his sleep tunic and pants. The pale plaster walls of his room were blank, his coverlet a light beige without any pattern. Given its price, the space was surprisingly comfortable—but Thane felt as if it were taunting him with its emptiness.

In the academy’s Security Protocols and Interrogation Techniques class, they’d taught that one of the most effective methods for breaking a person down was simply to make that person stare at a plain wall without ever sleeping. The sleep deprivation and boredom did what pain and threats could not. A prisoner’s mind would split itself open, spilling every word hidden inside, just to end the exhausting monotony. Thane had never understood how that worked until now.

A commotion outside made him sit upright. It sounded like some of the street merchants were folding up their not-quite-legal wares in a hurry. Thane went to the one small window in his room and pulled back the screen. On the ground a few floors down, he saw an Imperial patrol cruiser that had obviously just pulled up.

Then, on the stairs outside, he heard the thump of boots as someone headed his way.

All right, think fast. That’s a single-person cruiser. They only sent one guy. You can take one guy out. Not without a weapon, though. Was there anything he could use? But the few items in the room were all either too big to be lifted or too small to do any meaningful damage.

Maybe he isn’t coming for you. There are dealers in the neighborhood. Prostitutes. Smugglers. Plenty of people to arrest. But then they’d send one of the local paramilitaries, not an Imperial officer.

Thane took a deep breath as he ran his hands through his short hair. He’d have to bluff his way through it as best he could. If he denied being Thane Kyrell and acted completely confused, he might throw the guy off for a minute—long enough to grab the officer’s blaster.

But could he shoot a guy who was just doing his job? Someone who had been his fellow officer just a few days ago?

A fist thumped on Thane’s door. He mussed his covers as if he’d been asleep, went to the door, and said—as if groggy—“Mmhmmn. Yeah? Who is it?”

The reply: “I’m here on official business.”

He knew that voice.

Instantly, Thane opened the door and saw Ciena standing there in uniform. The sight of her felt like the first breath he’d taken in years.

“You made it.” He pulled her inside his room, locked the door behind them, and hugged her tightly. As he breathed in the scent of her skin, he had to marvel at Ciena’s brilliance. She hadn’t deserted; she’d come here on official business, making sure the Empire would pay her way and delaying any other pursuit. “You’re a genius, you know that? I kept waiting, and I thought they might have stopped you, but here you are. Here you are.”

Thane kissed her then, long and deeply. That damned gray uniform was too stiff against his hands, but they could worry about that later. Ciena kissed him back just as passionately—but when their lips parted she looked so troubled that he wondered if he’d done something wrong.

Or maybe she was worried about their safety. “Did the Empire send anyone else?”

“No. They were sure you’d go somewhere besides Jelucan. I knew you’d guess that, so of course you’d come here—”

Thane grinned. She understood him so well.

But Ciena looked even more distressed than before. “Thane, what have you done?”

And then he finally began to realize how far apart they still were.

An hour later, Ciena sat with Thane in the cantina below. She’d been afraid they would be overheard, witnessed, maybe even turned in, but Thane had shaken his head. “Trust me,” he’d told her. “The kind of people who come here? They give Imperial officers a wide berth. Nobody we know is likely to show up.”

“It’s not worth the risk,” she’d said.

But Thane’s square jaw had set in the way that she knew meant complete determination or just plain stubbornness. “If I don’t get out of this room, I am going to lose it. Trust me. We’ll be safe.”

Sure enough, they had the entire corner of the place to themselves. Most of the patrons were newcomers to the planet, not natives, and they crowded at the front near the viewscreens. She and Thane sat at their small table alone. Merely being in a run-down cantina like that would have unnerved her a few years ago or even now, if she weren’t so wrapped up in trying to stop Thane from making the worst mistake of his life.

“You can come back,” she repeated. “I know you think they’ll arrest you, and at any other time they would have, but they badly need qualified officers after what happened.”

“I don’t want to come back,” he said, not for the first time.

Ciena still refused to believe it. “Three years in the academy—all that work, all that effort, for nothing?”

“You think I’m happy about this? I’m not. But after what I’ve seen, what the Empire is doing to the Bodach’i—after Alderaan—I can’t wear that uniform any longer.” Thane leaned over his glass of ale, head in one hand, like a man with a headache. “I thought we agreed about this.”

“I thought we agreed that after what happened to so many of our friends aboard the Death Star, we needed to stand together. The rebels killed thousands of our fellow officers. They killed Grand Moff Tarkin—”

“Tarkin was nice to us,” Thane admitted. “Meeting him changed our lives.”

“—and they killed Jude,” Ciena continued. “Do you condone that?”

“I’m not joining the damned Rebellion, Ciena. I’m not condoning what happened to the Death Star or what happened to Alderaan. Are you? That’s impossible. You’d never think destroying an entire world was the right thing to do.”

Miserably, she shook her head. “No. I understand the thinking that led to the attack on Alderaan—but I don’t condone it. The thing is, I don’t have to.” Ciena leaned closer, looking into Thane’s blue eyes and willing him to understand. “The Emperor and the Moffs have to see, now, that destroying Alderaan did no good. It didn’t stop the Rebellion; if anything, it made the rebels more desperate.”

“So two billion people died in vain,” Thane said.

“And nearly a million aboard the Death Star.” Ciena refused to ignore Jude’s death. She still had nightmares of running through the station’s corridors, screaming for Jude to get on a shuttlecraft, but never finding her friend. “Now the Death Star is gone. Even if the Emperor wanted to do something so drastic again, he couldn’t. Besides—the only reason to attack Alderaan was to prevent an even more devastating war. The war has begun anyway. It’s too late to save the galaxy from that. All I can do is fight on the side of law and order and stability.”

Thane’s laugh was harsh. “Things fall apart, Ciena. Our parents saw the Republic self-destruct. The Empire might last another year or another decade, but eventually there’s going to be a brand-new order and brand-new law. Who will you serve then?”

“You don’t have to be cruel just because I won’t—because I can’t desert my post.” She couldn’t even be angry with Thane; her sorrow was too great. Of course he would rage against Alderaan’s destruction, but that didn’t have to change everything. And of course he hated slavery—she did, too—but the Empire had scarcely invented the practice. What counted now was bigger than any individual incident. This was a matter of the deepest principle. “We took an oath. We swore ourselves to the Empire’s service. We can’t break that, not ever.”

Thane shook his head. The amber lights in the cantina painted his hair a deeper red and cast shadows on his face that showed how much he was struggling. “You’re still the girl from the valleys. You won’t go against your word, even when you’ve promised yourself to a leader and a fleet that don’t deserve you.”

“And you’re still the second-waver. You find it easier to break your promises than to keep them.” But Ciena was ashamed of the words as soon as she’d spoken them. That was her father’s prejudice talking, and her own misery at the thought of losing Thane.

He wasn’t offended. Instead he whispered, “It’s not easy for me to leave you. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

She turned away, unable to look at him any longer.

Thane seemed to think she was reacting out of anger rather than grief, because he spoke more formally when he asked, “Will you report me?”

“I—” What could she say or do? She was trapped now between her loyalty to Thane and her loyalty to the Empire. As angry as she was with Thane for deserting his commission, she couldn’t imagine sending him to jail. How could she ever do something like that to the person she loved? “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. Great.” He ran one hand through his hair. “Do you at least know if you’re going to report me tonight?”

Something within her broke. “Of course not.”

Thane’s voice had turned harsh, cutting. “That won’t be breaking your oath? Destroying your precious honor?”

“Sometimes we’re loyal to more than one thing. When there’s a conflict, we have to choose which loyalty to honor.” Ciena had begun trembling; she felt as if she were being torn in two. “I don’t know what I’m going to do tomorrow. But tonight, right now, I choose my loyalty to you.”

All the anger melted away from Thane then. His hand cupped the side of her face, and she couldn’t hold back any longer. Ciena leaned closer, clutching at his jacket so he wouldn’t get away from her. She wanted nothing but for him to stay with her now, tonight, however long they could have. She wanted to believe he wouldn’t go away.

Thane kissed her again, more deeply than before. Ciena closed her eyes, wound her arms around him, and imagined that she could stop time. This moment would be crystallized and eternal—his chest pressed against hers, the soft rasp of his stubble against her cheeks, the low rough sound he made as his hand found the curve of her waist.

When they pulled apart, breathing hard, she leaned her forehead against his and whispered, “Upstairs.”

It took Thane another couple of breaths to answer. “Are you sure?”

In that moment she felt as if she could be sure of nothing. Thane—one of the constants in her life, her polestar—was leaving forever. The world had turned upside down, and she suspected it could never be put fully right again.

But that was why she was determined to take everything she could have. To live completely in this moment, this night with Thane. To stop time.

“Yes,” she whispered against his mouth. “Yes.”

Thane couldn’t sleep.

It was the dead of night and he was worn out, but it didn’t matter. All he could do was look at Ciena.

She drowsed against his shoulder, not entirely asleep or awake. Her tightly curled hair, set free, spread around her head on the pillow like a dark halo. Her full lips were swollen from their kisses. And even though he’d spent the better part of the last three hours learning absolutely every detail of her body, it still exhilarated him to see her lying next to him, wearing nothing but a corner of the sheet.

As he lay beside her, Thane—for the first time—asked himself if he could do what Ciena asked. Could he return to base, admit to a moment of weakness, and go back into service? Probably Ciena was right about the current crisis absolving many sins. What would’ve earned him months in the brig a year ago was now likely to be no more than a smudge on his record.

If he returned right now, he could stay with Ciena—

But he couldn’t go back. Not after what he’d seen. He’d spent his entire childhood suffering under the cruelty of one hypocrite; he refused to inflict suffering on behalf of another, even if that person was the Emperor.

For Ciena it was different. Her loyalty, once given, was absolute. The Empire didn’t deserve her, yet it had her in its grasp forever. She didn’t remain a part of the Emperor’s machine because she was ambitious or corrupt. No, the Empire had found a way to use her honor against her. The strength of her character was the exact reason why she would remain in the service of evil.

It was as if she were already gone forever, even as he felt her soft breath against his shoulder. Thane hugged her tighter, burrowing his face into the curve of her neck. Ciena sighed softly as she came closer to consciousness; her hand slipped around his waist to deepen their embrace.

“You awake?” he murmured.

“Mmm-hmmm.” Then she stirred again and answered more believably, “I am now.”

“I love you.” He couldn’t believe he’d never said it before. It was like stating that the sky was overhead—so obvious, so fundamentally true, that verbalizing it ought to be unnecessary.

She lifted her face to his. “I love you, too. Always have. One way or another.”

“I love you in every way.”

“Yes.” Ciena smiled, but the expression was so sad that it hurt Thane—a literal ache in the center of his chest. “In every way.”

“If I begged you to stay with me, it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?”

She shook her head. “If I begged you to get on the next transport back to Coruscant, you wouldn’t, would you?”

He didn’t have to say anything. They both knew the answer.

“So that’s the end.” The words came out more harshly than Thane had intended, but he trusted Ciena to understand his anger wasn’t aimed at her. “The Empire takes us from each other forever.”

“If it weren’t for the Empire, we would never have come together in the first place. Think about it. Would you have ever made friends with a girl from the valleys any other way?”

Thane had been so small when Jelucan was annexed by the Empire that his earlier memories were jumbled and unsure. In some ways, it felt like his life had truly begun that day, with his dream of flying for the Empire, and with Ciena. “I guess not.”

Ciena sat up, as if she was going to get out of bed, but Thane pulled her back. She wouldn’t look him in the face any longer. “I should go.”

“Stay.”

“If I stay, leaving will only be harder.”

“Would leaving now be any easier? Really?”

“No.” Finally, Ciena met his eyes. “Thane, you have to get off Jelucan, within the week. Because at the end of one week, I’m going to report you.”

Thane felt it like a stab wound between the ribs. “What happened to choosing which loyalty to honor?”

“I chose you tonight. I wish I could always choose you. But if I covered for you forever, my oath of loyalty to the Empire would be worthless. This is the only time, do you understand?” By now her voice had begun to shake. “This is the first time and the last.”

Somehow, deep inside, Thane had still been convinced he would see Ciena again. He wanted to believe they could find each other no matter what. But now he realized that was foolish, the dream of a child.

“Do you understand?” Ciena repeated.

“…yes.” The word was bitter. “So you’d throw me in a military prison, even after this.” Thane gestured at the rumpled bed, their discarded clothes on the floor. Her insignia plaque shone slightly in the dim light.

“I gave you fair warning, just now! Besides, you have to get on the move sooner or later. How much time have you wasted here?”

“Wasted? I was waiting for you.” He hadn’t known he could be so angry at someone and still love her. “I guess that was wasted time after all.”

Ciena winced but she kept on. “You can’t get a job on Jelucan. Catch the next freighter to an independent world—and don’t even think about indenturing yourself, okay? Find yourself some work somewhere else in the Outer Rim, where they’ll never look for you.”

“I don’t need your advice—”

“You need someone’s advice. Otherwise you’re just going to stay here in Valentia, moping and losing your way.”

That stung, but Thane began to realize she wasn’t completely wrong. “Okay, fine. I’ll ship out of here soon.”

“Within the week.”

Because after one week she would report him. The woman he loved would report him to the Empire. “Yeah,” he said flatly. “Within the week.”

She took a deep breath. “So there’s nothing more to say.”

But Ciena made no move to leave. Instead she brushed her palm against his cheek; her thumb traced the line of his cheekbone.

He ought to tell her to get out. To tell her he was done sharing his bed with someone who cared more about the Empire than she did about him. Cruel words like the ones his father and Dalven used came into his mind fully formed, as if the wickedness he’d known from them had been buried deep inside, waiting to hatch: I’ve already had everything I want from you. Gave it up easy, didn’t you?

But he said none of that. Instead he asked himself what he’d regret more—leaving her now or going to bed with her again. Either way was going to hurt.

Their gazes met, and when she leaned closer, he cupped his hand around the back of her head to bring her in for a kiss.

The time Thane had left with Ciena could be measured in mere hours. They wouldn’t waste it.

Ronnadam scowled down at her report on his screen. “You’re quite sure of this, Lieutenant Commander Ree?”

“As certain as anyone can be without finding a body—and in the crevasses, it’s difficult for even scanner droids to search. The sky burial takes the dead within days, sir.”

“Sky burial?”

Ciena wished she could have taken back those words; her thoughts were too much on Jelucan and all she had left behind there. “On Jelucan, sir, we put our dead in open cairns at high altitude. Birds devour the body, taking both the flesh and the soul of the deceased into the sky with them, forever.”

“Barbaric,” Ronnadam said with a sniff. She managed not to flinch. “But I suppose the same thing would happen with an accident—or suicide, as it seems we have here.”

Ciena nodded. “Lieutenant Kyrell was overcome with grief after the loss of so many fellow officers and friends aboard the Death Star. Based on my interviews on Jelucan, I believe that he originally deserted and returned to his homeworld in an effort to restore his will to live, but it didn’t work. He leaped from one of the higher cliffs in our home province, leaving his ridgecrawler behind. Still running.”

She shouldn’t have added that. Lies were best kept simple, or so Ciena had been given to understand. But she had lied so little in her life. The dishonesty tasted foul in her mouth.

When she’d parted from Thane, Ciena had fully intended to live up to her word and report his desertion after one week. A week was long enough for him to get his act together, escape to some obscure world, and vanish from her life forever.

That also gave her time to go home to her parents, who had been happy and surprised to see her—and no doubt even more surprised when she burst into tears at the door. Although Ciena had pulled herself together well enough, and had said not one word about Thane to her family, she knew they sensed that this was no routine visit. Mumma had sat up with her late into the night, asking no intrusive questions, simply braiding Ciena’s hair the way she’d done when Ciena was a little girl. Her mother’s touch had been comforting, but nothing could assuage Ciena’s misery at the thought of turning Thane in.

In the end, she hadn’t been able to do it. If the Empire made any effort to track him down, however minimal, it was possible they would find Thane and bring him back to stand trial.

So she chose her loyalty to him once again and protected him with the best lie she could create.

“Very well.” Ronnadam signed off on her report without even fully reading it. Had Thane deserted at any less desperate time for the Imperial fleet, Ciena realized, her story would have been scrutinized much more closely. Now all Ronnadam wanted to do was cross a task off his list. “You handled this well, Lieutenant Commander Ree.”

The praise felt like stones on her back, growing heavier throughout the day. Ciena burned with shame to have been commended by a superior officer for violating her oath of loyalty.

Never again, she promised herself. From that day on, her service to the Empire would be more than her duty: it would be her atonement for loving even one person in the galaxy more than her honor.