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Leonia Tavira smiled, then stepped forward one last time. She took my jaw in her hands and pulled my mouth to hers. Her tongue played across my lips, then she kissed me, fully and deeply.

I wanted to tell myself that I didn’t thrust her away because of the injuries to my hands, but I knew that wasn’t the truth. The thrill I had felt before exploded inside of me, running from my loins to my brain and back down, rendering my pain insignificant. I found my nose full of her scent, and could feel each strand of her hair that lashed gently against my cheeks.

The injuries to my hands were the reason I did not pull her closer.

My face burned as she pulled away, a victorious smile on her face. She glanced at Elegos. “Take good care of him. I will call upon him in a month for his decision, and if he is not healed, I will return to Kerilt and sterilize the planet.”

She kissed her fingers and pressed them against my lips. “A month, then all you desire, in your heart and mind, will be yours for the taking.”

She swept from the room and a few seconds after her departure, the fire in my lungs reminded me that breathing was indeed a necessary part of my continued existence. I greedily sucked in air and snorted it back out, trying to clear her perfume from my nose. I did my best to ball my left fist and smack it against the table, but Elegos caught my wrist and stopped me from doing that as easily as a parent curbing a child’s tantrum.

He didn’t say anything, but just started washing my left hand. The sting of water and the rasp of the sponge over torn flesh helped bring me back into myself. I wanted to apply a quick Jedi calming technique, but to do so would betray me to Tavira’s advisors. Using such a technique also required more composure than I could muster at the moment.

There was no denying that I was attracted to Tavira. It was a physical thing, an animal thing, a magnetic attraction of one meat machine to another. I wanted to think of it on that plane alone, as if I were betrayed by the crude matter that trapped my spirit, but I knew that wasn’t the whole story either. There was something in her spirit that I found intriguing. I told myself that what drew me to her was situational—like my attraction to Siolle Tinta or Wedge’s attraction to Qwi. Still, I found something about Tavira absolutely fascinating, which made it difficult to deny the enticement of the flesh.

What disturbed me more than my feeling of being drawn to her was her analysis of why I hated Remart and why I had done to him what I had. Even when describing the fight to my interrogators, I denied the detail of the damage I had inflicted on him. Kicking him in the stomach, smashing his face, all of that was certainly one way to win a fight with him, but I’d been trained in much quicker and more effective ways to deal with someone like him. Even in our first encounter, a shot to the throat had backed him off. That same blow, delivered more forcefully, could have crushed his windpipe and killed him without a fraction of the damage I’d done to him.

I looked at my hands and knew I could have easily put him down without cutting myself and breaking bones. I’d known forever that hitting someone in the face was a great way to break a hand, but I did it anyway. I’d hit him there to punish him, and I’d hit him to punish myself. Somewhere, deep down inside, I knew the beating I gave him was wrong. I couldn’t stop myself, so I made myself pay.

Tavira suggested that I’d hated Remart so much because we were so much alike. I couldn’t believe that, but cold assessment showed me her comparison wasn’t terribly flawed. The necessities of the pirate society had brought out my worst traits. I’d allowed my arrogance and cockiness to run away with me and bring me down to the Invids’ level.

Remart is what I would have been had I fallen in with the Survivors and not the Rebellion. A chill ran down my spine. It would have been so simple, too, because the Survivors loved the Empire no more than I did when I was on the