Sacrifice

She turned her attention back to Lumiya. Now Lumiya was showing up at confrontations with the Confederation. Perhaps everyone was looking in the wrong direction, and Lumiya was working for Corellia.

The last time she'd seen her on the resort satellite, Ben wasn't even around—but Jacen was. Who was Lumiya going after, Ben or Jacen? If Lumiya's presence was making Jacen forget what being a Jedi was all about, then maybe Mara needed to keep tabs on Jacen, too.

That was easier said than done. She needed to try a more direct approach there, maybe talk to him for once. Nobody else had managed to.

It was hard to get Jacen to listen, and even harder to get hold of him these days. He took the secret in secret police literally.

Then something vanished from the Force.

Ben—

It was like a shape flashing past her peripheral vision, and a familiar background noise stopping abruptly, leaving a dead, soundless ringing in the ears.

Ben's gone—

Ben had disappeared from the Force.

Mara's hand was on the controls to jump to hyperspace and head back to Coruscant at top speed when the sense of her son flooded back as if the sound had been turned on again. Her stomach rolled.

Maybe it's me.

He'd done it before as a little boy, scared by the last war, the one against the Yuuzhan Vong. It was uncontrolled and instinctive. But what Mara had just experienced felt like something more deliberate. When she concentrated on him, he felt fine—no, more than fine. He felt elated.