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“They’re not the only ones. There were Senators in this as well.”

Now, finally, she looked at him, and fear shone from her eyes.

He smiled.

“Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“To me?”

“You need to distance yourself from your … friends … in the Senate, Padmé. It’s very important to avoid even the appearance of disloyalty.”

“Anakin—you sound like you’re threatening me …”

“This is a dangerous time,” he said. “We are all judged by the company we keep.”

“But—I’ve opposed the war, I opposed Palpatine’s emergency powers—I publicly called him a threat to democracy!”

“That’s all behind us now.”

“What is? What I’ve done? Or democracy?”

“Padmé—”

Her chin came up, and her eyes hardened. “Am I under suspicion?”

“Palpatine and I have discussed you already. You’re in the clear, so long as you avoid … inappropriate associations.”

“How am I in the clear?”

“Because you’re with me. Because I say you are.”

She stared at him as if she’d never seen him before. “You told him.”

“He knew.”

“Anakin—”

“There’s no more need for secrets, Padmé. Don’t you see? I’m not a Jedi anymore. There aren’t any Jedi. There’s just me.”

He reached for her hand. She let him take it. “And you, and our child.”

“Then we can go, can’t we?” Her hard stare melted to naked appeal. “We can leave this planet. Go somewhere we can be together—somewhere safe.”

“We’ll be together here,” he said. “You are safe. I have made you safe.”

“Safe,” she echoed bitterly, pulling her hand away. “As long as Palpatine doesn’t change his mind.”

The hand she had pulled from his grasp was trembling.

“The Separatist leadership is in hiding on Mustafar. I’m on my way to deal with them right now.”

“Deal with them?” The corners of her mouth drew down. “Like the Jedi are being dealt with?”

“This is an important mission. I’m going to end the war.”

She looked away. “You’re going alone?”

“Have faith, my love,” he said.

She shook her head helplessly, and a pair of tears spilled from her eyes. He touched them with his mechanical hand; the fingertips of his black glove glistened in the dawn.

Two liquid gems, indescribably precious—because they were his. He had earned them. As he had earned her; as he had earned the child she bore.

He had paid for them with innocent blood.

“I love you,” he said. “This won’t take long. Wait for me.”

Fresh tears streamed onto her ivory cheeks, and she threw herself into his arms. “Always, Anakin. Forever. Come back to me, my love—my life. Come back to me.”

He smiled down on her. “You say that like I’m already gone.”

Icy salt water shocked Obi-Wan back to full consciousness. He hung in absolute blackness; there was no telling how far underwater he might be, nor even which direction might be up. His lungs were choked, half full of water, but he didn’t panic or even particularly worry; mostly, he was vaguely pleased to discover that even in his semiconscious fall, he’d managed to hang on to his lightsaber.

He clipped it back to his belt by feel, and—using only a minor exercise of Jedi discipline to suppress convulsive coughing—he contracted his diaphragm, forcing as much water from his lungs as he could. He took from his equipment belt his rebreather, and a small compressed-air canister intended for use in an emergency, when the breathable environment was not adequate to sustain his life.

Obi-Wan was fairly certain that his current situation qualified as an emergency.

He remembered …

Boga’s wrenching leap, twisting in the air, the shock of impacts, multiple detonations blasting both of them farther and farther out from the sinkhole wall …

Using her massive body to shield Obi-Wan from his own troops.

Boga had known, somehow … the dragonmount had known what Obi-Wan had been incapable of even suspecting, and without hesitation she’d given her life to save her rider.

I suppose that makes me more than her rider, Obi-Wan thought as he discarded the canister and got his rebreather snugged into place. I suppose that makes me her friend.

It certainly made her mine.

He let grief take him for a moment; grief not for the death