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But he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more to it than that. He didn’t consider himself a cruel person. He didn’t believe he was ruthless or sadistic. Yet how else to explain what he had done to the helpless Makurth? It had been murder, or execution … and Bane was having trouble accepting it.

He had a lot of blood on his hands: he’d killed hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Republic soldiers. But that had been war. And the ensign he’d killed on Apatros had been a case of self-defense. Those were all cases of kill or be killed, and he had no regrets about what he’d done. Unlike yesterday.

No matter how he tried, he couldn’t find a way to justify what had happened in the ring. Fohargh had taunted him, feeding his rage and lethal fury. Yet he couldn’t even use the excuse that he’d been swept up in the heat of the moment. Not if he was being honest with himself. He’d felt his emotions raging through him as he’d drawn on the dark side, but the act itself had been cold and deliberate. Calculating, even.

Lying in his bed, Bane couldn’t help but wonder if the relationship between passion and the dark side was more complex than Qordis had made it seem. He closed his eyes, thinking back on what had happened. He took slow, deep breaths, trying to stay calm and detached so he could analyze what had gone wrong.

He had been humiliated and embarrassed, and he’d responded with anger. His anger had let him summon the dark side to lash out at his enemy. He could remember a feeling of elation, of triumph, when Fohargh went sprawling through the air. But there was something else, too. Even in victory, his hatred had kept growing, rising up like the flames of a fire that could be quenched only with blood.

Passion fueled the dark side, but what if the dark side also fueled passion? Emotion brought power, but that power increased the intensity of those emotions … which in turn led to an increase in the power. In the right circumstances, it would create a cycle that would end only when a person reached the limits of his or her ability to command the Force—or when the target of his or her anger and hatred was destroyed.

Despite the heat in his room, a cold shiver ran down Bane’s spine. How was it possible to contain or control a power that fed on itself? The more he, as an apprentice, learned to draw on the Force, the more his emotions would control him. The stronger a person became, the less rational he would be. It was inevitable.

No, Bane thought. He was missing something. He had to be. If this were true, the Masters would be teaching the students techniques to avoid this situation. They would be learning to distance themselves from their own emotions, even as they used them to draw upon the dark side. But there was nothing of this in their training, so Bane’s analysis had to be wrong. It had to be!

Somewhat reassured, Bane let his thoughts drift into the comfort of sleep.

“You make me sick,” his father spat. “Look how much you eat! You’re worse than a kriffing zucca pig!”

Des tried to ignore him. He hunkered down in his seat at the dinner table and concentrated on the food on his plate, shoveling slow forkfuls into his mouth.

“Did you hear me, boy?” his father snapped. “You think that food in front of you is free? I gotta pay for that food, you know! I worked every day this week and I still owe more now than I did at the beginning of the blasted month!”

Hurst was drunk, as usual. His eyes were glassy, and he still reeked of the mines; he hadn’t even bothered to shower before hitting the bottle he kept tucked away beneath the covers of his cot.

“You want me to start working double shifts to support you, boy?” he shouted.

Without looking up from his plate Des muttered, “I work just as many shifts as you do.”

“What?” Hurst said, his voice dropping down to a menacing whisper. “What did you just say?”

Instead of biting his lip, Des looked up from his plate and right into his father’s red, bleary eyes.