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Through the Shadow Crown, Skywalker’s light could shine upon every crystal of darkness.

Every shadow stormtrooper. Every gravity station. Every millimeter of the shadow web of crystalline nerves in his body, and Vastor’s, and—

And Cronal’s own!

With a snarl, he yanked his mind back into his body; it would require only a second to pull the Crown from his head.

Or it would have, if he could have made his arms work …

In the shimmery glow from the viewscreens within his life-support capsule, Cronal could only sit and watch in horror as his skin began to leak black oil. This black oil flowed from every pore, from his ears and nose and mouth and eyes. This black oil drained even from the channels within the Shadow Crown.

And not until the last drop of it had left his body could Cronal even take a breath.

He did not, however, have time for more than a single breath before the meltmassif rehardened, encasing him wholly in a sarcophagus of stone. The asteroid of meltmassif around his chamber melted, and its shreds vaporized as they fell from the hyperdrive zone. Very soon, the hyperdrive itself fell away, as it had been mounted on the stone, rather than on the chamber.

The chamber, no longer within the hyperdrive’s protective envelope of reality, simply dissolved.

Cronal had enough time to understand what was happening. He had enough time to feel his body lose its physical cohesion. He had time to feel his very atoms lose their reality and vanish into the infinite nothing of hyperspace.

HAN SAT ON THE POLYFILM SURVIVAL BLANKET UNDER the Falcon’s starboard mandible, hugging his knees and waiting for the sun to rise. Leia lay on the blanket beside him, breathing slowly and easily now. She looked like she was only asleep.

He didn’t think he should wake her up.

The only word Leia had been able to speak had been light. She’d kept asking for light, even with every light source within the Falcon dialed up to maximum. She must have been talking about a different kind of light.

And when Han had gotten the grim news on their situation from Lando, he’d figured that he might as well give her what she was asking for.

Everyone was going to die anyway. There was no escaping this trap. The choice was between being killed by the breakup of Mindor or being roasted alive by Taspan’s stellar flares.

So he’d set down the Falcon on the shattered battlefield, spread the blanket, and made Leia as comfortable as he could. Chewbacca had hung back; he watched over them from the Falcon’s cockpit, out of respect. Humans, he understood, often wanted privacy at times like these.

Han had stayed at Leia’s side as her seizures quieted; he stayed at her side as her every pore oozed black and shiny meltmassif, as it drained off her and puddled on the blanket. And he would stay at her side as the groundquakes strengthened and the killing sun rose over the horizon.

He would be at her side when the planet exploded.

A bitter irony: she had suffered so much from being forced to watch her homeworld destroyed. Now she would die in very much the same brutal fashion as had her family and all her people.

That was why he figured he probably shouldn’t wake her up.

But the Force again displayed that nasty sense of humor; Leia stirred, and her eyelids fluttered. “Han …?”

“I’m here, Leia.” He felt like his heart would burst. “I’m right here.”

Her hand sought his. “So dark …”

“Yeah,” Han said. “But the sun’s coming up.”

“No … not here. Where I was.” She drew in a deep breath and released it in a long, slow sigh. “It was so dark, Han. It was so dark for so long I couldn’t even remember who I was. I couldn’t remember anything.”

Her eyes opened and found his face. “Except for you.”

Han swallowed and squeezed her hand. He didn’t trust his voice.

“It was like … like you were with me,” she murmured. “You were all I had left—and I didn’t need anything else.”

“I’m with you now,” he said, his voice hoarse, unsteady. “We’re together. And we always will be.”

“Han …” She pushed herself up to a sitting position and swiped a hand across her eyes. “Is there anything