They were in a cargo hold on the Gaze Electric, where Lourna had brought the last Blythe as well as their captured Jedi. She hadn’t caught either of their names. They were both still passed out from the gas, which made sense. She hadn’t wanted to take any chances with Jedi magic, and had dosed them again on the journey back from Elphrona.

“They work like this,” Marchion said, holding out the hilt.

He twitched his finger and the blade hissed into life, throwing the hold into golden relief.

He swung it a few times, like an experiment, seeing how it felt, listening to the humming, buzzing sound it made.

“I’m going to keep this,” he said.

Lourna Dee took an involuntary step backward, hating herself a little for it. But Marchion Ro was no Jedi. She wasn’t sure what he was these days, actually. He’d always had an edge, but he knew his place. He was the Eye, and nothing more.

Now…all that was gone. He seemed…confident, in some new and deeply unsettling way. Like he had changed, grown, become something greater than he previously was.

Or, as she was beginning to suspect, this was always what he’d been, and he’d just decided to hide it from her and the other Tempest Runners. But they’d all known it, hadn’t they? Down on some instinctive level.

Marchion Ro was a predator.

He spun, swinging the lightsaber faster now, big, deadly sweeps. Lourna stepped back again. She didn’t care if he thought she was a coward. If it slipped out of his hand, that thing could cut her in half with no trouble at all.

“Kassav’s Tempest encountered a trap set by the Republic, Lourna Dee,” Marchion Ro said. “A huge battle fleet. It was tragic. They all died. What do you think about that?”

“About Kassav?”

“Yes.”

Swing. Swing.

Lourna Dee didn’t respond, not for a long time.

“I think your spy in Senator Noor’s office told you the Republic already had the location you sent Kassav to. I think you knew that battle fleet would be waiting, and sent him and his Tempest there to die. So what I think…is that you just killed a third of the Nihil.”

Marchion Ro stopped swinging the lightsaber, ending its arc so it was pointing directly at her.

“Look at you, Lourna,” he said, “Smarter than I would have guessed. The question is…what will you do now?”

Lourna Dee’s attention was completely focused on the tip of the lightsaber, hovering and humming just a few centimeters from her face.

“You could leave, I guess,” Marchion said, “but the Republic has all the specs for that beautiful ship of yours. Transponder signal and everything. You’d have to leave it behind, and you named it after yourself. That’d hurt, I bet.”