She stood there for a time, staring at the ladder that led into her cockpit, listening to the hum of the engines, thinking that if she got in and took off, she could never come back.

She thought back to the pain she’d felt when Master Zallow had died. She had felt it physically, a searing shock in her abdomen that burned away doubt. Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, a new, clean breath, and shed her outer Jedi robes, the robes she’d earned under Master Zallow’s tutelage.

She could not avenge him as a Jedi. She could and should avenge him as his friend.

“What are you doing, Aryn?” Vollen called from behind her.

She turned to see that Vollen and Keevo had followed her to her ship. Vollen wore a concerned frown.

“Are you following me?” Aryn asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“What are you doing, Aryn?”

She put one hand on the ladder to her cockpit. “I already told you, Vollen. Something for Master Zallow.”

“But your robes? I don’t understand.”

She could offer no explanation that would satisfy him. She turned, climbed the ladder to the cockpit, and pulled on her helmet. Thankfully, T6 held any questions it might have had.

Vollen and Keevo walked toward the ship. Aryn felt Vollen’s alarm, his uncertainty. He stopped when he reached Aryn’s robes. He looked as if he were standing over a grave. Perhaps he knew what it meant that Aryn had left them there.

“Tell Master Dar’nala I am sorry,” she called to him. “Tell her, Vollen.”

Vollen and Keevo did not come any closer. It was as though the discarded robes demarcated some boundary they could not cross.

“Sorry for what?” Vollen called. “Aryn, please tell me what you’re doing. Why are you leaving your robes?”

“She will understand, Vollen. Be well.”

She lowered the transparisteel canopy on the cockpit and could not hear whatever Vollen said in response. The engines grew louder and Vollen stood on the landing pad, staring up at Aryn. Keevo stood beside him, his dark eyes on Aryn’s robes.

“Get us out of here, Tee-six,” she said. “Set a course for Vulta, in the Mid Rim.”

She knew someone there, once. She hoped he was still there. If anyone could get her to Coruscant, it was the Z-man.

The droid beeped agreement, and the Raven’s engines lifted it from the pad.

She looked down one last time to see Vollen gathering her robes with the same delicacy he might use to bear a fallen comrade.

MALGUS REPLAYED THE EXCHANGE with Adraas and Angral again and again in his mind. His anger remained unabated when he stepped off the lift onto the roof of the Senate Building and strode toward his transport, ignoring the guards who saluted him as he stalked past. The transport pilot waited on the lowered landing ramp.