More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Rae Carson
Read between
May 27 - September 17, 2020
Hux distrusted masks on principle, but he was glad for Ren’s because it spared him the indignant assault of the Supreme Leader’s hair.
“Oh, it’s a terribly dangerous act, performed on unwitting droids by degenerates and criminals!” Finn brightened. “So we do that!”
“The day my parents left. They were on that ship.”
Until there was something for him to shoot at with a blaster, Finn would have to settle for holding on tight and offering encouragement. He was good at encouraging. He could encourage all day.
Finn knew exactly how much work it took to keep everything looking like it just came off a Corellian assembly line.
Poe leaned over and whispered in Finn’s ear: “Does she do that to us?” Of course not. She’d never—no, wait…she definitely would.
A fellow couldn’t reasonably expect to get out of that kind of situation more than once.
“What’s your operating number?” a stormtrooper was asking C-3PO. The droid responded with an unintelligible soup of syllables. “That’s not even a language!” the stormtrooper said.
“Friends!” said Cone-head.
Kylo really hated that ship.
Some people considered it crass to name fighter craft, but she’d named hers anyway: Comeuppance. Zorii had a lot of scores to settle.
As her ship broke atmo, she decided where she was going. In the very same moment, she forgave Poe Dameron. He hadn’t run away from her and the gang; he’d run to something. Zorii would do the same.
Now his leg was uncomfortably warm and a little bit itchy. Small price to pay for getting away with treason and murder.
It was just like the starship graveyard on Jakku, except wetter. And about a thousand times bigger.
“Babu Frik!” C-3PO exclaimed. “Oh, he’s one of my oldest friends!”
Leia decided to ignore that, like she was ignoring Luke.
Luke had fought Darth Vader here, and the energy—or maybe memory—of that battle still lingered. She closed her eyes and sensed terror, pain, regret, and…a determination to save someone who was deeply loved.
The dark Rey hissed, revealing pointed teeth.
Leia, there is only one thing left to do. Galaxy save us all from big brothers, she thought.
The first time he’d sent a toy flying across the room with the power of the Force, calling on his tiny, toddler rage.
The last thing they would learn from her was how to go on without her, thus finally embracing their own destinies as leaders. Bail Organa had been the one to teach her that.
So that’s how it would be. A final act of hope, and then she would rest.
a whir of sadness from R2-D2, and finally a surge of welcome from Luke, who was not alone… —
What would Leia do?
Why had his mother loved him right up until her last moment?
“Hey, kid,” came a voice. The familiarity was like a lightsaber through his gut.
“Dad…?” he said, suddenly small. Vulnerable. Right. Han Solo smiled. “I know.”
He knew what he had to do. Somehow, he would find the strength to do it.
She’d killed three people, sabotaged two others, and barely slept in twenty years, just so she could be among the first to fly out into their new galaxy.
all the ships in his fleet—” “Have planet-killing weapons,” Poe finished with dawning horror. “Of course they do.
He and Rey had been saving each other since the moment they met. That’s what friends did.
“Well, I’m quite certain I’d remember if I had a best friend.” C-3PO turned away. There was nothing worse than an astromech with delusions of grandeur.
“A Jedi’s weapon deserves more respect,”
“Leia was stronger than all of us,” Luke said.
Maybe, of all of them, Leia had been unturnable.
Rey watched, awestruck, as the fighter drifted with perfect precision and control to an area of flat ground, where it landed with a tiny thump.
“Everything you ever wanted to know for an air strike on Exegol.”
R2 was practically singing as he plugged into one of the console’s dataports.
“That’s an old craft ID. AA-589.” He stepped back, blinking. Turned to Finn. “It is Luke Skywalker’s X-wing.”
He’d changed his Aki-Aki garb for bright clothing and a knee-length cape. Poe really liked his cape. He’d have to ask about it when all this was over.
Stepping foot inside the Falcon again was going to hurt.
He’d thrown a lot of great parties in that hold.
Then that cheater Han had won the ship from him in a fateful game of sabacc, and the first thing he’d done was retrofit the cape closet to create a first mate’s bunk for Chewie and a hidden compartment.
He’d been so glad for an excuse to kill the sniveling rat.
“You wanna launch a ground invasion on a Star Destroyer?”
Finn was really tired of jet troopers.
She gazed off into the distance for a moment, probing, all the while shielding her thoughts. Kylo Ren had given her lots of practice at shielding her thoughts.
Rey! She sensed him. She understood that he was Ben again.
Plagueis had not acted fast enough in his own moment of death. But Sidious, sensing the flickering light in his apprentice, had been ready for years. So the falling, dying Emperor called on all the dark power of the Force to thrust his consciousness far, far away, to a secret place he had been preparing. His body was dead, an empty vessel, long before it found the bottom of the shaft, and his mind jolted to new awareness in a new body—a painful one, a temporary one. It was too soon. The secret place had not completed its preparations.
One genetic strandcast lived. Thrived, even. A not-quite-identical clone. His “son.” But he was a useless, powerless failure.
