Still. Neither she nor Cohmac could look back on those events without regrets. That was something Orla understood without having to ask. They’d grown up to be two very different individuals—but their bond endured, and always would.

Orla knew her decisions to become a Wayseeker might separate her from many in the Jedi Order. Not from Cohmac.

“I’ve never kept secrets from you,” he admitted.

“You’ve tried,” Orla said. “I just never let you get away with it.”

“Don’t remind me.”

She intended to remind him at regular intervals throughout their lives, but she could drop it for a day. “Are you going to make me interrogate you?”

“Do you have to?” Cohmac’s dark eyes searched hers. “Coming back here, on our way to a place so close to E’ronoh and Eiram—finding ourselves imperiled again, having to guess at the dangers that lie ahead—”

“It’s a very different situation,” Orla hastened to say. The vibrations of that long-ago event were strong enough without delving deeply into it. She wasn’t sure she was ready to bear that.

“I sense that there will be further parallels,” Cohmac said. “There are…other resonances, all around us. Their forms remain unclear, but before this mission is over, we will see them true.”

“Got it.” No mystic, Orla figured it was time to change the subject, but then she felt it. The same shiver of terrible cold that had seized her before—the same bleak place so far away—

“Cohmac!” she called, but he couldn’t hear her. They were both lost in the petrifying vision.

Reath strolled along the perimeter of the arboretum level, almost idly, as if he weren’t keeping a sharp eye on the Mizi, the Orincans, and some of the others who’d tried looting earlier. (He, personally, would’ve waited longer to allow everyone to board freely again, but this was not a point on which he felt comfortable challenging a Master.) While Leox had ably calmed them down and the tunnels to the lower rings provided their own deterrents to entry, it seemed possible that a loner from any of the groups might try something. If they took some equipment from the station—Reath honestly didn’t care. Anybody who needed spaceship parts badly enough to pilfer centuries-old ones could have them. But if they stole one of the ancient idols, they’d just sell it for the precious metals or jewels without even bothering to study it. Sacrilege.

Worst of all would be another kidnapping attempt. Reath again remembered the moment his lightsaber had severed the man’s arm, the faint thump through the blade that told him he’d hit and destroyed bone. He shuddered. Dez’s kind words had helped, but this wasn’t something he could ever totally put behind him. The act of attacking another person with a lightsaber was horrifying, and Reath hoped it would always remain so.