Sacrifice

inner voice told her that the only person who deserved that anger was herself, for defending Jacen while the fact that things were going disastrously wrong was staring her in the face. But Mara was human, and scared for Ben, and it boiled over onto Jaina. "Forgive me for asking, but being his twin, have you never had this out with him?"

"I tried. He responded with a court-martial charge, remember?"

"I can't help thinking that you might have tried slugging him."

"Suddenly he's my responsibility? I'm the one who said he was going dark, way back."

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry." Mara put her hands up in mock submission.

She could apologize, but she couldn't retract her acid tone, and she regretted that. "I just—okay, none of my business."

"Spit it out, Mara."

"I just don't get how you can be so caught up in worrying whether you want Jag or Zekk when your own brother's going to pieces and taking others with him."

"Whoa

"Sorry. I said it was none of my business."

"Well, you said it, so—yes, I want to be distracted by personal issues, because otherwise I'd go nuts trying to understand why Jacen's doing what he's doing to our parents."

"Maybe it's time we all faced that. Together."

There was an awkward silence. Mara wanted to tell Jaina that she was a grown woman now and it was time to stop messing around like a teenager, and that Ben was more adult at fourteen than she was at thirty-one. It was spiteful, partly true, and partly fueled by Mara's incomprehension of anyone