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And there never will be.

Leia smiled a little. “Anakin said that the Order couldn’t wait for a great Jedi Knight to lead it. That every Jedi Knight has to be his own light, so that the Light that is the Jedi never goes out.”

Tahiri bit her lip, but the tears kept coming. She thought back to all the times she had flow-walked with Jacen, trying to find closure, trying to make it all right for him to be dead, to be gone. And it never worked.

“He asked about you. He asked if you were well.”

“What—” Tahiri took a breath and blinked hard, forcing composure she did not feel. “What did they tell him?”

Leia’s smile widened. “That you would be,” she said. “And then he said … tell her that I still love her.”

Tahiri’s composure shattered. She had held her emotions in check for so long, too long. The flow-walking, the dance with the dark side, the trial that was going to force her to revisit some of the ugliest and most painful moments of her past—she had suppressed all the emotions they had stirred up, but now she found herself no longer able to.

He still loved her. He always would, and she would always love him. This, this was the closure her lonely, broken, lost self had sought. Even as she wept broken sobs, and as Leia and Han both wrapped arms around her, she could feel things inside her that had been jagged and raw beginning to mend and heal, a terrible cold knot she hadn’t even realized was there starting to melt.

He would always love her, and he would always be with her. She could let go, now. Let go of the dream of Anakin, let go of the self-hatred of what she had done and become since then. After a few moments, she lifted her head from Leia’s shoulder and looked first at her, then at Han.

“I’m going to be all right,” she said. “They’re going to find me not guilty. They’re going to find me not guilty because I’ve got too much to do, too much to set right, to fix. Too many bridges to repair. And I’m going to do that.”

“For Anakin,” Leia said quietly.

Tahiri shook her head, her golden hair moving softly with the gesture. “Not just for him. For me.”

“Good call, kid,” Han said, his voice a little rough. “That’s the way our boy would have wanted it.”

And Tahiri knew that it was.

JEDI TEMPLE, CORUSCANT

KENTH HAMNER SIPPED A CUP OF CAF AND GLANCED AT A PILE OF datapads on his desk. So many things were getting neglected, but that was the nature of command, of leadership—one had to prioritize, practice a sort of political triage. Not everything was going to get accomplished. Hamner’s job was to make certain that if something had to slide, it wasn’t the important things.

To that end, taking a cue from the woman who was starting to become the chief thorn in his side, he had promoted one of the most promising apprentices, a young woman named Kani Asari, to the role of an assistant. It was, like many decisions he had been forced to make recently, not a very popular one with some of the other Masters. He had heard grumblings, especially from the more outspoken people like Kyp Durran and Han Solo—who wasn’t even a Jedi—who hadn’t bothered to try to hide their displeasure. Luke, the Grand Master, the creator of the new Order, hadn’t had to have an “assistant.” Couldn’t Hamner get his own caf and read his own datapads? Did he need pillows fluffed for him, too?

None of them quite understood the volume of activity that passed across his desk on any given day—any given hour. He did not think even the intrepid Han Solo would be able to juggle everything. And of course, everyone who had any kind of an issue with him or the Jedi felt that his or her problem was the single most dire thing in the known universe.

Hamner ignored the grumblers, and only hoped that the fair-haired, rather petite human girl who was doing a superb job was either ignoring them, too, or, better yet, hadn’t overheard them.

He sensed Kani on the other side of the door and called, “Come in,” rising and going to a small sideboard.

She poked her golden