Sacrifice

"You can have Alema. She needs a serious attitude readjustment with a lightsaber, too. It's not as if we haven't got enough kill-crazy stalkers to go around."

No matter what happened, Luke knew he didn't have that assassin's ability to kill someone who wasn't trying to kill him right there and then. If he had . . .

So Ben wasn't the only one navigating a moral maze. Luke had been doing it for decades, but the maze was only acquiring more twists and turns each year.

"Let's see how much Jacen perks up with Lumiya gone," he said.

Wait, did I just bless an assassination? "And with Alema out of the way, then Leia and Han can come back into the fold, and we can face this war as a family again."

Mara patted his cheek with a regretful smile and set a droid on cleaning the dishes. She spent the rest of the afternoon assembling and checking an array of weapons that definitely didn't come from a civilized age.

"I never knew you had one of those," he said, pointing to a blaster that had the widemouthed muzzle of a grenade launcher. "How are you planning to use it?"

"With a flechette cartridge. Let's see her try a lightwhip on that."

"Do you want to take my shoto?"

"You offering?"

"Good-luck token, maybe."

"Under-the-rib-cage token, more like. Unless that's all durasteel, too."

This was his wife. Sometimes he caught a glimpse of the woman she once had been, and she was a stranger for a second or two.