by Claudia Gray
A soft thump and a few apologetic beeps testified to a collision in the hallway, and only an instant later, Bail re-entered the bedroom. Her father’s haggard face would’ve shocked Leia if she hadn’t been sure she looked much the same. “I spoke to the Domadis.” His breath caught in his throat before he shook his head and began pulling off his long coat. “To put two people through such pain—”
Quietly Breha said, “Bail. Please.” One of her hands covered Leia’s shoulder.
Her father caught himself. “I told them there was a small-craft accident in the upper atmosphere, and that he sacrificed himself for Leia. The droids had worked out a more detailed scenario we could use if they’d asked more questions, but…they didn’t need it. Didn’t want it.” After a moment he added, more hoarsely, “I told them that we are forever in their debt, and that Kier Domadi would be recognized as a hero not only by our family, but by all of Alderaan.”
Would their dead son’s heroism comfort the Domadis? Leia couldn’t imagine anything making this hurt less, for them or for anyone. And no matter how bravely Kier had rushed to help her, she couldn’t forget what would’ve happened if he’d lived. “He would’ve reported the rebellion.” She’d told her parents that much in her first moments back on Alderaan, but she’d been too upset to reveal more than the bare facts. Neither of them had brought up the subject since. “He wanted to cover for our family if he could—he didn’t understand how impossible that was—but still. He would’ve done it.”
Bail sat on the edge of the bed, clearly weighing his answer. Breha brushed her fingers through the loose strands of Leia’s hair that had fallen from her messy braids, the way she had sometimes soothed her daughter when she was a child. Leia sat there, her body too heavy with grief to rise, staring up at the centuries-old mural painted on the ceiling, where old-fashioned spaceships soared toward the sun. Finally Bail said, “Kier did what he thought was right despite incredible risk. Under Palpatine’s rule, very few people have the courage to live that way, but he did. He acted selflessly, out of love. We may make mistakes when we let our hearts guide us—terrible mistakes—but I think we are never wholly wrong.”
Leia didn’t know if she agreed. She was weary in heart and mind, too tired to question herself, too tired to hold up her heavy head. Laying herself back down on the broad bed, she wondered when she’d be ready to get up.
But she would. When Leia rose from this, she intended to assume her rightful place alongside her parents as they struggled to free the galaxy. She’d lie here until she regained her strength, and then, she swore, she’d be ready to fight.
Kier’s memorial service on Alderaan was simple, short, and heartfelt. He’d been given full honors scarcely short of what a war hero would’ve received, and his parents had unexpectedly accepted their queen’s offer of a place in the royal cemetery.
“It overlooks the palace,” Mrs. Domadi had said. She had her son’s dark eyes and sharp chin. “And the river that flows to Aldera. Kier loved this world. He’d want to rest at its heart.”
“He—he wanted to study history, you know. This way he’s with his heroes forever.” Mr. Domadi’s voice sounded so like Kier’s that Leia had to struggle not to cry just hearing it. He smiled directly at her as he said, “I think he’d want to be near the palace for other reasons, too.”
His words wrenched her heart—but Leia had gotten through it, with her parents by her side. She’d had days to recuperate in the palace, and endless droids and staffers eager to help in any way they could. Before Kier’s burial, she had taken a lock of his dark hair and had found comfort in putting it inside her keepsake chest. She’d thought she was beginning to heal.
Then she returned to Coruscant. Walked into the Organa family apartments half-expecting to see him sitting on the low couch where they’d hung out together. Traveling along pathways they’d taken to and from the senatorial complex. Sitting in the Alderaan pod of the Apprentice Legislature alone. Her friends all tried to help her in their way, but being around them only reminded her more sharply of Kier’s absence. The one person Leia could bear to spend time with was Amilyn, who took her skyfaring nearly every day; the struggle to stay aloft in the scarves pushed everything else from her mind and allowed her to exist only in her body, in the now.
On her fourth day back, she went to her father’s offices to go over some proposals, only to discover his last meeting was running long. She took a seat at his desk, dreading the expanse of time ahead of her. Even if it lasted only minutes, those were minutes grief could strike.
Then the HoloNet signal blinked. Leia, used to taking messages for her father, answered—only to see the stark, pale image of Grand Moff Tarkin appear, hovering above the floor like a ghost.
“Princess Leia.” He gave her his bloodless smile.
Smiling back was utterly beyond her, but she managed a pleasant nod. “Good day, governor. I’m afraid my father isn’t in.”
“I wasn’t calling for your father. I was calling for you.”
He would only have called her at this office if he’d had someone watching her, noting her movements. That troubled her less than the fact that he wanted her to know it. As cautiously as she would’ve approached a feral creature, she straightened in her seat and folded her hands in her lap. “To what do I owe the honor?”
“First I wished to offer my condolences on the death of your fellow apprentice legislator—a Mr. Domadi, I believe the name was. I understand he was a promising young man.”
Tarkin had to suspect the true conditions of Kier’s death, coming as it did just before the Empire’s unsuccessful raid on Paucris Major. The hazy version of events given in the official report had been sufficient to convince most people, but not Imperial agents. These “condolences” were his way of twisting the knife.
“Kier was one of the best of us,” Leia said smoothly. “Thank you for your kind words. I’ll pass them along to the family, if you wish.”
“Please do.” Tarkin turned his head to study her from a different angle. “Given our conversation a few days ago, I also wished to inquire as to whether you were well. Though of course you are. I’ve found you to be a young woman of great…composure.”
Translation: I know you lied to me. I know you lie very well. I know you’re a part of whatever your parents are plotting. And I know you’re the reason the ships at Paucris Major got away.
She met his eyes with ease, never glancing away. “I’m quite well, Governor. Believe me when I say I fully appreciate your concern.”
The office doors slid open to admit her father. Two steps in, Bail saw the spectral flicker of Tarkin’s holo and quickly moved into holo range. “Governor Tarkin. How can I help you?”
“No further help is required. Your daughter has answered all my questions.” Tarkin sharpened his smile for her father. “She’s become a charming young lady.”
The pride on her father’s face at that moment comforted Leia more than almost anything else had. “Yes, we’re tremendously proud of her. Thank you so much for your call, but if you’ll excuse us, we have work to do.”
Tarkin’s end of the call blinked out with no further goodbyes. Leia found she could breathe again. “He’s watching us,” she said.
“He always will be.” Bail’s broad hand squeezed her shoulder. “But there are ways to use his surveillance against him. Imperial agents tend to follow standard protocols, which means we have opportunities to show them what we want them to see. Give them information that leads to false conclusions. The trick is keeping ourselves protected while still making them believe they’re getting usable intel.”
The possibilities expanded within Leia’s mind, collided and combined, taking on levels of complexity she’d never guessed at before—but they made instinctive sense. It was as though her father had begun speaking to her in a language she hadn’t heard in years but had known since birth. “Will you teach me?”
Bail betrayed no sadness at seeing her plunge more deeply into the fight, only pride. �
�This was lesson one.”
The Apprentice Legislature session ended shortly afterward, and Leia returned home. She might’ve dreaded the thought of empty hours when either grief or fear could hound her—but she had important tasks to accomplish, and a challenge to fulfill.
The sun had reached its zenith just as she pulled herself up from her foothold to stagger onto the rock plateau. Sweating and panting, Leia blinked at the glare, vivid even through her protective goggles, until she’d fully taken in the view from the top of Appenza Peak. Smaller mountains and hills surrounded her, spiky and sharp, but beyond them in the far distance she could make out the green slope of gentle country. The vast royal palace, which in her childhood had seemed like a world unto itself, was too small to be more than a glint on the horizon.
We ought to have stood here together, Kier. You should’ve been with me.
At least she hadn’t had to make the climb alone.
The scrape of boots on rock prompted her to turn. Breha pulled herself onto the summit, even sweatier and more flushed than Leia herself. Her Alderaanian subjects might’ve been startled to see their queen like this—wearing military-issue all-terrain gear, dusty and disheveled, but aglow with satisfaction. To Leia, this was her mother at her most essential.
“It’s even more beautiful than I remembered.” Breha wiped her forehead with the back of her hand before going for her water bottle. “I should’ve done this again long ago. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s best I’m here with you.”
The next question had waited with Leia for years, but the time had finally come to ask: “Where did it happen?”
“We passed it some way back. Not that I know the spot exactly. It’s something of a blur, as you can imagine.”
“But—it was far up enough that they granted you the summit. Said you passed your challenge.”
This earned her a raised eyebrow from her mother. “Granted me the summit? Oh, no, indeed. I made this ascent fair and clear. What nobody tells you is that descents are even harder.”
All these years later, Alderaanians still spoke of “the accident” in hushed tones. It was the moment the monarchy nearly ended without an heir, the day when a beloved princess—even more beloved than Leia herself, as Leia well knew—had nearly died. Her mother had fallen while completing her Challenge of the Body; the resulting injuries could’ve claimed her life. She’d been saved through quick action by the guards observing at a distance, but some of the damage had been permanent. It was after the accident that Breha’s heart and lungs had been replaced by the pulmonodes that still glowed faintly in her chest. And it was due to the accident that her parents had elected to adopt a child rather than strain Breha’s body further.
Without that one terrible incident, Leia’s life might’ve been very different.
Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Breha studied her daughter as she spoke. “We look at our challenges—at our lessons—as things we master in order to achieve our goals. But the most important lessons in life sometimes have to do with what happens when we fail. How do we know when to surrender and walk away? How do we judge our own part in our failures? Is it something to learn from, or just bad luck? And how do we pick ourselves up again afterward?”
Leia looked back toward the horizon where she knew the palace lay. She remembered standing at Kier’s grave, head held high, her false promise to him heavy in her heart. The wind whipped around her and her mother, reminding them that the mountain would only welcome them for so long. Soon they’d have to descend.
“You’re learning the most powerful lesson of all, my daughter,” Breha continued. “You’re learning how to fall.”
Kier had said that. Leia had realized it was important even then. But it was one of those truths that couldn’t be understood until it had been lived through, until you finally fell.
“Normally, of course, I’d have gone with something more festive in a gold or perhaps red.” 2V whirred around Leia, straightening the long skirt. “But given everything—suffice it to say, silver is formal, elegant, and flattering. You look lovely.”
That was as close as her droid could come to acknowledging Leia’s grief. She was more moved by the gesture than she would’ve thought. “Thanks, TooVee.”
Glancing to one side, she saw the bare spot on her mantel where her keepsake chest had always been—until late last night, when she’d given it to her father as a sign that she considered her childhood over. Many heirs to the throne gave up their keepsake chests at the point of investiture, but the ritual didn’t demand it. Leia had simply known it was time. The hardest part about handing it over had been letting go of that lock of Kier’s hair, that one small part of him. At least it would always be contained within the chest as one of her greatest treasures.
“I’ll take good care of this,” her father had promised, in a tone of voice that made her wonder, yet again, what he’d meant….
The far-off fanfare echoing through the corridors alerted her that she was running late again. Leia turned to allow 2V to fasten a broad collar necklace, then straightened. Time to go.
Once more she took the shortcut through the old armory, full skirt billowing around her as she ran. At least today the weather had decided to do its part; brilliant sunlight streamed through every window, and she knew the throne room would glow with multicolored prisms from the stained glass. She felt—not happy, exactly, but as close to it as she’d come since Kier’s death.
Conflicting emotions still swirled inside her whenever she thought of Kier. She suspected they always would. In the first days after his death, she’d tried to swear she would never fall for anyone again, though the reasons for that promise shifted and twisted in her mind: because she couldn’t trust anyone completely, because she didn’t deserve to find love after what happened to Kier because of her, because she didn’t know how to bear another loss like this.
Her promise to herself had become more realistic. Not until my work against the Empire is over, she told herself. After the struggle is over, then maybe—maybe I will meet someone else I can care about.
Until then, I fight.
When she hurried into the antechamber, the guards straightened and smiled. The way they smiled at her had changed, though. What she saw there was less like the adoration she’d been granted since childhood, more like the respect given to her parents. Leia knew to be proud of that—and she was—but in some ways it felt like a loss.
The person she’d been before, the happy young princess, was gone. A beautiful part of her life had ended. She could mourn that while still being prepared to move on.
After months of strengthening her arms and back through pathfinding, Leia found the Rhindon Sword didn’t feel so heavy anymore. Holding it aloft, she waited for the next fanfare, and—
The velvet curtain was pulled aside. Leia walked into the throne room, up the long aisle, toward the dais where her parents waited. Both her father and mother were garbed in pure white, which seemed all the more dazzling amid the sun-dappled shine of the room. As Leia went, she recognized friends standing on either side of her: Mon Mothma, who gave her a small nod, and Ress Batten, who looked too bowled over to react, and Chassellon Stevis, who winked. Very near the front stood Amilyn Holdo, whose hair had been dyed glittery blue, but who wore a simple dark green dress, at last striking a balance.
Standing before her parents, though—that moved Leia in a way she hadn’t been fully prepared for. The pale color of their garments highlighted the long silver streak in her mother’s hair, and the salt-and-pepper tones that had crept into her father’s beard. Declaring her right to the throne inevitably meant acknowledging that, someday, her parents would be no more.
The formal language of the ceremony came through in her thought: May that day be long in coming.
Her father started the ceremony this time. “Is this our daughter, come before us once again?”
“It is I, Leia Organa, princess of Alderaan.”
Breha had the next line. “When last you stood before
us, you swore to undertake Challenges of Mind, Body, and Heart. This you have done.”
Leia gripped the hilt even more tightly. “How do you judge me, my mother and queen?”
“I judge that you have completed your three challenges with great strength and even greater spirit. In all ways, you have proved yourself worthy.” Gesturing for Leia to step closer, Breha rose from her throne.
As Leia ascended the dais to join her parents, she held the Rhindon Sword aloft in one hand. Breha reached up to clasp the hilt along with her: two rulers, not fighting over the symbol of power but sharing its weight. Then it was time for Leia to let go and sink to her knees, bowing her head as her father stepped closer. At the edges of her peripheral vision, she glimpsed the glitter of jewels, but she had to keep her face down. Then the weight of the Heir’s Crown settled on her, fitting neatly into the nest of braids 2V had prepared for it. Even though Leia had waited all her life to wear this crown, the reality of it moved her more than she would’ve dreamed possible.
For Alderaan, she thought, promising both Kier and her parents to take good care of what she was being given that day.
“May all those present bear witness!” Breha cried. “My daughter is hereby invested as crown princess, heir to the throne of Alderaan.”
Applause and cheers filled the room as Leia rose to her feet and turned to face the crowd. Her parents stood on either side of her, beaming with pride—more pride, even, than many of their guests could know. Through the stained glass windows Leia could catch glimpses of the beautiful planet that she would someday rule.
My parents, Leia thought. My friends. My world.
These are the things the Empire can never take away.
THE END
CLAUDIA GRAY is the New York Times best-selling author of many science fiction and paranormal fantasy books for young adults, including Defy the Stars, the Firebird series, and the best-selling Evernight series. This is her third trip to a galaxy far, far away, as she is also the author of the Star Wars novels Lost Stars and Bloodline. Born a fangirl, she loves obsessing over geeky movies and TV shows, reading and occasionally writing fanfiction; however, she periodically leaves the house to go kayaking, do a little hiking, or travel the world. She will take your Jane Austen trivia challenge any day, any time. She lives in New Orleans.