Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [176]
She shook her head, not in denial, but in a kind of wonderment. “I keep thinking about Nichos,” she said. “About being ‘another Corellian of the same name.’ ” She turned her hands over, as she had when she’d waked in the Hunter’s Luck, feeling the shape of them, their long strength and the pattern of the veins and muscles beneath the porcelain-fine skin. Hefted in them the lightsaber she had once had the skill to make. His head close to hers, Luke could see the brown color already visible at the roots of her cornsilk hair, and knew that within a few months the whole would be that heavy, malt-colored mane he remembered from visions and dreams.
“I keep wondering if I shouldn’t have stayed where I was.”
“No,” said Luke, meaning it, knowing it, from the bottom of his heart. “No.”
She replaced the weapon at her belt. “Even if I’d known … this,” she said softly. “Even if I’d guessed … been able to see into the future … once Cray asked me if I wanted to … to take her place … I couldn’t have said no. Luke, I …”
He brought her into his arms, and their mouths met hard: giving, forgetting, remembering, knowing. Telling her without speech how groundless were the doubts that she didn’t dare put into words.
“It isn’t the Force in you that I love,” he said softly, when at last they eased apart. “It’s you.”
She bent her head forward, rested her forehead on his shoulder; they were much of a height. “It’s not going to be easy for me,” she said softly. “Maybe it’s not going to be easy for us. Sometimes last night, wandering in the caves, I blamed you for this. I was angry—I think I’m still angry, deep down. I don’t know how you could have been responsible, but I blamed you anyway.”
Luke nodded, though the words hurt. In a curious way he understood that they weren’t personal, and it was better to know. “I understand.”
She moved her head and looked at him with a wry quirk of smile. “Oh, good. Explain it to me?”
He kissed her again instead.
“Will you come to Yavin with me?” When she hesitated, he said, “You don’t have to. And you don’t have to make up your mind now. Leia tells me you’ve written out all the names you can remember of people who were here … She says you’ll be welcome on Coruscant, for however long you want to stay. And I know it won’t be easy to be … to be around students, adepts in the Force. But your knowledge of the old methods of teaching, the old ways of training, would help me …”
His voice fumbled with the words, and in the stillness of her face he saw her effort not to trouble him with her own pain, her own uncertainty.
Oh, the hell with it …
“I need you,” he said softly. “I love you, and I want you with me. Forever, if we can manage it.”
Her mouth moved in a smile. “Forever.” The gray eyes met his, darker than the fog around them, but equally suffused with light. “I love you, Luke, but … it’s not going to be easy. But I think … I feel that we’re going to be in each other’s lives for a long time.”
“We have time,” he said. “There’s no hurry. But there is—and there always will be—my love for you.”
They were still clinched tight in each other’s arms, cheeks resting on each other’s shoulders, when Han and Leia, Chewie, Threepio, and Artoo appeared in the broken gateway. Leia said softly, “Let them be for a while.”
“He can kiss her on the ship,” said Han good-naturedly. “Jevax has finally got the landing silos repaired, and we’ve got those gizmos from the toy room loaded up, and I for one want to get off this rock before something else happens.”
“This would be advisable, Your Excellency,” added Threepio. “Admiral Ackbar did mention concentrations of Grand Admiral Harrsk’s troops in