And that, he knew, was his weakness.

He stared at her and thought of the Twi’lek servant woman he had murdered in his youth …

He realized that his fists were clenched.

Shaking his head, he closed the door to the room in which Eleena slept and started up the portcomp at his work desk. He wanted to learn more of Aryn Leneer, so he linked to several Imperial databases and input her name.

Her picture came up first. He studied her image, her eyes. She reminded him of Eleena. But she looked different from the woman he had seen on the vidscreen on Valor’s bridge. The change was in her eyes. They’d grown harder. Something had happened to her in the interim.

He scrolled through the file.

She was a Force empath, he saw. An orphan from Balmorra, taken into the Jedi academy as a child. He scrolled deeper into her file and there found her motivation.

A picture of Master Ven Zallow stared out of the screen at Malgus, a day-old ghost.

Aryn Leneer had been Master Zallow’s Padawan. Zallow had raised her from childhood.

He scrolled back up to Aryn’s image. Back then, her green eyes had held no guile, no edge. He could tell by looking at her that she left herself too open to pain. Her Force empathy would have only increased her sensitivity.

He leaned back in the chair.

She had felt her Master die, had felt Malgus drive his blade through him.

That was what had changed her, changed her so much that she had abandoned her Order and rushed across space to Coruscant.

Why?

He saw the faint reflection of his own face in the compscreen, superimposed over hers. His eyes, dark and deeply set in the black pits of his sockets. Her eyes, green, soft, and gentle.

But not anymore.

They were the same, he realized. They had both loved and their love had brought them pain. In a flash of understanding, he knew why she had come to Coruscant.

“She is looking for me,” he said.

She would not know she was looking for him because she had no way to know who had killed her Master. But she had come to Coruscant to find out, to avenge Zallow.

Where would she go first?

He thought he knew.

He inhaled deeply, tapped his finger on the edge of the desk.

She was hunting him. He admired her for that. It seemed very … unlike a Jedi.

Of course, Malgus would not sit idle while she sought him out.

He would hunt her.

Day Two

A SQUAD OF SIX IMPERIAL FIGHTERS, bent wing interceptors, zoomed overhead, the hum of their engines drowning out and throttling Zeerid’s and Aryn’s laughter. The bent panels of the fighters’ wings formed parentheses around the central fuselage.

“That doesn’t look right,” Zeerid said. “Imperial ships over Coruscant.”

“No,” Aryn said. “It doesn’t.”