Star Wars_ Darth Bane 01_ Path of Destruction - Drew Karpyshyn [76]
“What about Kiel Charny?” He was rubbing her shoulders once again, but his hands were a little rougher now.
“I asked him to come with me,” she confessed. “I told him we had a choice to make: the Jedi, or each other. He chose the Jedi.”
The tension in Bane’s hands eased ever so slightly. “Is he dead?”
She laughed. “Did I kill him, do you mean? No, he was still alive the last I heard. He may have died battling the Sith on Ruusan since then, but I didn’t feel the urge to kill him myself.”
“Then I guess your feelings for him weren’t as strong as you thought.”
Githany stiffened. It might have been a joke, but she knew there was truth in Bane’s words. Kiel had been convenient. Though there was a physical attraction, he had become more than a friend mostly because of her situation: studying day and night with him under Master Handa; the pressure of living up to the unrealistic ideals of a Jedi; the stress of being trapped in the seemingly endless war on Ruusan.
Bane ringed her neck with his hands, his touch firm but not tight. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, causing her to shiver at the warmth and closeness of his breath. “When you finally betray me, I hope you care enough to try to kill me yourself.”
She jumped up from the chair, slapping his hands away and spinning to face him. For a split second she saw a self-satisfied expression on his face. Then it was gone, replaced by a look of apologetic concern.
“I’m sorry, Githany. It was just a joke. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I opened up a painful part of my past, Bane,” she said warily. “It’s not something I want to make light of.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I … I’ll go.”
She studied him as he turned and made his way out of the archives. He seemed genuinely sorry for what he’d said, as if he regretted hurting her. The perfect situation to give her the emotional leverage she had been looking for … if only she hadn’t seen that flicker of something else.
Once he was gone she shook her head, trying to make sense of the situation. Bane looked like a great, hulking brute of a man, but there was wisdom and cunning beneath his heavy brow and bald skull.
She thought back on the last twenty minutes, trying to determine when she had lost control of the situation. There had been sparks between them, just as she had intended. Bane had done nothing to hide his desire for her; she’d sensed the heat as he caressed her neck. Still, something had gone wrong with her carefully planned seduction.
Was it possible she actually felt something for him?
Githany unconsciously bit her lower lip. Bane was powerful, intelligent, and bold. She needed him if she was going to eliminate Sirak. But he had a knack for surprising her. He kept challenging and defying her expectations.
She had to admit she found him intriguing in spite of this. Or perhaps because of it. Bane was everything Kiel hadn’t been: ambitious, impulsive, unpredictable. Despite her best intentions, some small part of her was drawn to him. And that, more than anything else, made him a very dangerous ally.
16
High atop the temple of Korriban, beneath the light of a bloodred moon, two figures stood poised in silhouette: one human, one Twi’lek. A chill wind swept across the roof, but though both combatants had stripped off their robes to fight bare-chested, neither shivered from the cold. They might have been statues, still and hard as stone, were it not for the smoldering heat in their eyes.
Without warning the figures lunged, moving so swiftly it would have been impossible for an observer to say which one acted and which reacted. They met with a thunderous crash of their savage blades.
Even as he desperately fought to hold his ground, Bane was studying Kas’im carefully. He was acutely aware of every feint and strike, analyzing and memorizing each