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“Well, there’s this whole twins thing. The Yuuzhan Vong want you and Jacen together, and whatever they plan for you can’t be good.” Tahiri looked away for a moment. “Jaina, all I have to do is to think a certain way and I become Yuuzhan Vong, for as long as I can stand to. This thing about twins, it’s not a casual interest. It’s an obsession. Where twins are, the eyes of the gods look down. Twins distort reality around them. It’s a sacred thing.”

“So what?”

“So, let’s say Jacen is alive. I hope he is. Let’s say you go with Master Skywalker to Coruscant. You’re seen but not captured. The Yuuzhan Vong suddenly know that both the twins are on Coruscant. They’ll devote a lot more resources to finding Jaina Solo than they would to just finding a party of invaders, even Jeedai—Jedi—invaders. Right or wrong?”

“Well … right. But they might not recognize me.”

“True. So you’re going to risk Luke and Mara on a ‘might not’?”

Jaina felt a growing sense of desperation. It was like so many of her fights in early Jedi training with her Uncle Luke. She’d press hard, put him on the defensive … and then realize the degree to which his superior skill was turning her lunges into awkward, off-balance, losing strategies.

She was losing this argument. Losing to Tahiri, who was both years her junior and all bottled up in pain because she’d lost Anakin.

“Luke and Mara aren’t as close to Jacen as I am. I’m his twin.” Deep down, she knew that the statement was insupportable, that Luke and Mara had skill, experience, and Force sensitivity enough for this task. But it was the argument she’d chosen, so she stubbornly stuck with it.

“So I’ll go instead of you.”

“You?”

Tahiri nodded, solemn. “Other than you, who’d be better? I don’t know Jacen as well as you do. I can’t feel him in the Force as well. But I know him better than any Jedi who wasn’t in a Force-bond with him the way we were on that Yuuzhan Vong worldship. And no one, no one, knows the Yuuzhan Vong, at least the way they think, better than I do.”

Jaina just looked at her, unable to argue that point. “I think …” She felt the heat of her argument slip away from her. She dropped almost effortlessly into a reflective state. She was sure Luke would approve of the transition. “I think you’ll let your emotions get the better of you.”

“I could say the same thing about you. Which brings us back to the point. Does neither of us go, or do I go?”

Jaina sighed, defeated. Oddly, the defeat didn’t anger or irritate her. She just felt more tired than before. “You go.” She felt Tahiri begin to lean forward for an embrace, but Jaina turned away before that feeling could be translated into action. She didn’t want Tahiri to feel closer to her. It would only hurt Tahiri more once she was dead. “Thanks for caring.”

“You’re welcome … but you may not want to thank me after the other thing I have to say.”

There was something in Tahiri’s voice, some reluctant warning, that caused Jaina to turn back to look at her more closely. Tahiri’s expression was an odd mix: concern, apprehension, a reluctance to hurt.

“All right,” Jaina said, dubious. “Let’s hear it.”

“First, believe me, I understand that what I’m saying is none of my business. But I have to say it anyway.” Tahiri took a deep breath to compose herself. “I think you should stop avoiding your mother.”

“Avoiding her?” Jaina offered Tahiri an incredulous expression. “She’s everywhere. I bump into her a dozen times a day.”

“You know what I mean. You’re not avoiding her as a defender of Borleias. You’re avoiding her as your mother.”

“That’s ridiculous. I haven’t started calling her ‘Leia’ or ‘Hey, you,’ or ‘What’s-your-name, Han’s wife.’ ” “You have started calling her ‘Mother’ instead of ‘Mom.’ ”

“Have I?” Jaina frowned, trying to remember.

Tahiri just stared at her, and Jaina had the uneasy feeling the girl was staring right through the screens of logic she’d erected for herself as though they were the most highly polished transparisteel.

Jaina relented. “Look,” she said. “I love my mother. But we don’t have, I don’t know, the kind