Prologue

Luke said no. He listened to her story, watched the holo of General Organa entreating him to return, somberly thanked Rey for returning his lightsaber, and said no. No, he would not return to assist the Resistance. No, he would not train her. No, he would not even record a response to his sister. His public life was over. If he left Ahch-To, it would be in a box. He bade her a safe journey back and did not wait to watch her ship depart.

Her words to Chewbacca, as she boarded, were brief. He was disgusted. She was disappointed. Luke Skywalker was not the man she'd imagined. He may have been a great hero once, but those days were behind him.

She never dreamed of the island again.

Chapter One

He waited for her at night.

Each night she swayed slowly towards him beneath the trees, their canopy blocking out the moonlight, and took his outstretched hand. He drew her towards him and wordlessly led her into the forest. She had no sense of time passing as they walked, her hand tucked in the crook of his elbow, he sometimes pausing to hold a branch out of their way. The hints of moonlight that shivered over his face showed his shadowed eyes, the curve of his mouth. Sometimes they slowed their progress through the woods to listen to the chatter of night creatures or the murmur of the breeze. Before she roused from her dream he would whisper a kiss against her lips, and she would awake with her mind still spinning.

Every night was a little different, each time he held out his hand and she went to him. She remembered the hazy pleasure of the night before and relished the chance to slip into the same floating world. As they walked through the forest he bent to her, brushing his lips against her hair, released from her knots and spilling down her shoulders. After a time he stopped and drew her against him, fitting her under his arms and stroking his hands up and down her back as she sighed in pleasure.

The dreams were her refuge.

The never-before known feeling of being small and fragile, yet not vulnerable, was heady. She loved the feeling, wished she could bathe in it. She had always taken care of her herself, because she had to. It had become her very nature. But this luxury was so rare, so delicious. She wished to see him fight to defend her, to prove he would protect her from the universe. He told he would, his voice hoarse, and she laughed and allowed him to scatter kisses across her face and down her neck. He buried his face in the hollow of her shoulder and she preened against his hands as they ran over her body. His hands were strong, but their touch was reverent.

During the day she tried not to think of her dreams. They were fantastical and absurd.

She found time to walk in the forest almost every day. How strange to imagine someone she loathed so much in a place she found such peace in. Perhaps, after finding him in the forests on Takodana and Starkiller, she simply associated them. She should be frightened of forests, really. But they called to her the way oceans once had.

She never felt threatened in the dreams. They were intoxicating, and when she lay her head on the pillow she was eager to be spellbound again. She told no one, because she could imagine their disgust.

She only knew she didn't want the dreams to end.

Life on D'Qar was busy. Loud. The constant noise made her tense. Niima Outpost could be loud, but she was seldom there. Here she was around people all the time, and they talked constantly. Machinery blasting, ships landing and taking off. People rushing around muttering. Even in her room, she could hear people outside and in the halls. On Jakku she'd gone days without seeing people.

Most of the people at the base were friendly. Finn was there, but she only saw him at meals sometimes. He was devout in his service to the Resistance, convinced that the destruction of Starkiller signified the vulnerability of the First Order. He buried himself in Resistance work with the passion of a true believer, and Rey realized he'd traded one religion for another; this one, at least, he'd chosen for himself.

In his spare time he threw himself zealously into the social life of the base, making up for lost time. He tried to draw her into it, but every time she tried to fit in with the others on the base she felt like a liar. The first time a Resistance member had tried to kiss her she'd knocked him down and received a written reprimand. These people believed in what they did and worked hard, but when they weren't working they seemed messy and casual in a way that repelled her.

She wasn't a casual person. She wasn't comfortable pretending things didn't matter, because they did. If things like that didn't matter to her she could have had a much easier life on Jakku.

Poe said she was reticent because she'd been sheltered, which didn't make sense to her. She couldn't remember a time in which she'd been sheltered or protected, never had to fight and guard herself against anything that walked or breathed. She didn't have to carry her staff on the base, but that didn't mean there was nothing to protect herself against. Everyone else there felt something she did not. They had a love for what they did, but she felt only a longing for that love, for that sense of belonging.

She relaxed only in her dreams. She didn't have to struggle to reach them, as she had on Jakku. Each night they welcomed her, and she slid into them gratefully.

Maybe things would have been different if Luke Skywalker had returned. Maybe if he trained her she would have had a purpose on this strange world, where she was alone in a different way than she had been on Jakku. There she'd been independent, at least; here she was a cog in a machine. She felt, somehow, less significant than ever.

She hadn't known that was possible.

She had the Force. She felt it, a half-hidden sense, one she couldn't exercise. She'd been able to control it only three times, all of them on Starkiller Base. Kylo Ren had awoken it in her … or given it to her. Or maybe she'd taken it from him. She'd been scavenging her entire life; maybe she'd finally found something of real value.

But when she took it, she must have taken part of him. She could feel it inside her. Dissatisfaction. A longing for more than this cramped life. She'd stumbled into the Resistance as a kindness, and somehow it was assumed she'd remain. The only thing keeping her on D'Qar was uncertainty.

She thought, sometimes, that she should avoid the forest. It brought her peace, but it was wrong, surely, to need so much comfort. But the idea of enduring the camp without the relief of the forest filled her with dread.

Maybe that was its own answer.

She'd been on D'Qar for almost three months when she realized the days were getting shorter. She headed for the forest as soon as her shift in the mechanics' bay ended and came out only when it was growing too dim to see, but the time she spent there was shrinking; she could feel its loss upon her soul. Soon, she realized with a falling heart, she'd have only her dreams to sustain her.

It had happened: The first evening when it was too dark for her to walk in the forest after work. She felt uneasy as she lay in bed that night, and as she felt sleep overwhelm her she had the fleeting fear that the forest would abandon her dreams as well. But she opened her eyes and there he was, dark and beautiful, holding his arms open for her. She ran inside them and pressed her face against his chest. He cupped her cheek and she leaned into him, trying to push closer. He hummed his pleasure, and it was long time before they moved. This time with him was the only thing right in her world, and she wished she could never wake up.

The next morning she decided to skip breakfast in favor of scraping out some time to walk in the forest.

She passed Poe on her way out of the compound and told him she was skipping breakfast. Poe wished her a happy walk and turned when friends hailed him, the strange girl who preferred the forest to the Resistance soon forgotten.

The forest felt different—vastly different—depending on what time she visited. In the late afternoon and early evenings it was mellow and sleepy. At night—in her dreams, at least—it was mysterious and otherworldly, a different planet instead of a different time. In the early morning, she found, it was hushed, painted with golden light and inexpressibly ancient.

There was something overwhelming about it. She stopped, dizzy, sinking down on a boulder to compose herself. She buried her face in her hands, trying to get her brain to stop spinning.

After a long moment she looked up, and there he was.

He was tall and broad, his face unmasked and tender. She realized, then, that she was asleep. In her dreams they had only walked through the forest at night; this was the first time she'd seen him, the Kylo Ren of her imagining, in the daytime. His dark robes melted into the shadows thrown by the trees, but his pale face, shot through with the mark she'd left on him on Starkiller, shone clearly. She'd felt the scar under her fingers, but the moonlight had not permitted her a clear view of it. In the morning light she could see it … and see how his eyes searched over her. She wasn't surprised. Even barely able to see him she'd felt his gaze pressing against her skin like a caress.

How odd that she was aware this was a dream. Each night as she walked with him it seemed as real as life, and she never thought beyond each moment. Maybe her dreams were changing.

"Hello, my darling," he said softly. He reached out as if to touch her face, and everything went black.

She sighed a little as she woke up. The best of her day was already behind her, lost with her dreams. She barely remembered it—she was walking into the forest alone; it was daylight, and he wasn't waiting for her. She'd been surprised that he finally arrived … she'd thought he wasn't coming…

Rey girded herself against another day on D'Qar and opened her eyes. But instead of the plain whitewashed walls of her quarters, these were marble; she only recognized the costly material from a holo. The room was large and airy, with big windows and a bed like a vast cushion. The air smelled of flowers, and for a moment she thought she was still dreaming.

Then she turned around and there he was, leaning against the wall. The scar she'd given him was vivid across his face, and his eyes were hungry upon her.

Disbelief curdled in her chest.

For a moment she couldn't move. She thought he must have used the Force to hold her in place, as he had on Takodana, but he didn't have an arm stretched out to her; he looked relaxed, even. As if this were an ordinary occurrence, seizing women. Seizing her.

It was the second time he'd taken her. It was an ordinary occurrence.

She shoved back what felt like a dozen plush coverlets and sprang from the bed. Instead of her utilitarian sleepwear from the base she was wearing a ridiculously thin shift embroidered with tiny flowers. She might have been excited to wear it if she weren't here.

There were doors at either side of the room; she ran halfway to one only to realize it was the 'fresher; she didn't want the 'fresher, she wanted a way out. Kylo Ren was between her and the other door, so she flew to one of windows instead. It was actually, she realized gratefully, a kind of door. She snatched it open and ran through it, only to skid to a halt.

Instead of leading to freedom, or even a maze of rooms she could lose him in, the door led only to a balcony overlooking a lake. It was ringed with enough greenery that any other time she would have cried with wonder. But now—now she was trapped. She stared at the beautiful sight, unable to reconcile it with the nightmare that was happening.

He moved behind her onto the balcony and reached his arms around her to rest them on the railing, boxing her in. "I thought you'd like it here. I know there will be a period of adjustment, but I did it for both of us. You were miserable on D'Qar. It hurt me. Your loneliness was unabated."

Her mind darted but settled on nothing. She couldn't think, couldn't begin to imagine why he'd taken her and brought her here. It could not have been because he felt bad for her. That wasn't something you did for someone else.

Or maybe it was. Maybe it just wasn't something someone would do for her. Even Finn hadn't noticed how disengaged she was on D'Qar, and he was the best friend she'd ever had. The only person who'd ever done anything for her. The only thing Kylo Ren had ever wanted from her was the map to Luke Skywalker.

And to teach her, a little voice inside her reminded. Skywalker hadn't cared about her skill in the Force or what she did with it. But Kylo Ren had. Back on Starkiller he'd held her against a sheer drop into nothingness, could have pushed her into it without effort, and instead he'd asked her to train with him. He'd thought she had something of value, something in herself.

But wasn't that another way of using her? He hadn't offered out of kindness. There was nothing altruistic about Kylo Ren. "So you brought me here because you're a humanitarian?" she scoffed.

He laughed softly, his breath ruffling her hair. "No, not at all. I only do things because I want to. That's a prerogative I've won."

She twisted around in his arms, facing him. He didn't move back, even when she pushed. "You want me to be a pawn for Snoke, like you."

"I'd never want you to be a pawn."

Her gaze sharpened. "You want me to help you defeat him."

"There's nothing to defeat. I vanquished him before I ever came to you. He's dust. What was the First Order follows me now. But there's no reason not to call it what it really is: The Galactic Empire. I've restored it, and I'm taking back everything that was lost."

Rey gripped the railing until it began to bite into her hand. Was it possible? How could the Resistance not know?

Or did they know and were keeping the knowledge secret? She wasn't someone the command confided in. She was just a mechanic, a cog in a larger machine, easily replaceable.

Had they even noticed that she was gone?

"So you're…"

"Emperor. It's what I was born for. I've seen it in dreams many times, from my earliest childhood. Snoke was a distraction. A mirage."

Kylo Ren, the ruler of the galaxy? Kylo Ren, who'd killed his father and hurt Finn? Who'd kidnapped her and pushed his way into her mind, then flinched, his face shocked and vulnerable, when she'd done it to him?

Kylo Ren, who'd looked at her with beseeching eyes and begged her to let him teach her?

How could they all be the same person?

"Where am I?"

"My grandmother's home world, Naboo. This estate belonged to my family many years ago. Do you like it?"

She couldn't answer him, wouldn't. He knew she'd spent her life on Jakku; that was why he'd chosen this place. She knew it, knew he was using it like a tool to dismantle her resistance. The lake, the flowers, the lush green hills: She'd never imagined anything so gorgeous, like a refutation of Jakku's very existence. Its beauty clawed at her soul. "Why did you bring me here?"

"Why do you think?"

She shook her head. Thoughts wouldn't coalesce. Her outrage at being taken, her unreasonable ambivalence at seeing him, her visceral longing for this place: they all cycled through her mind unceasingly.

He sighed. "Rey, you were dying on the vine. Why did you stay with the Resistance when they don't care about you? Didn't you know I'd take care of you?"

He pushed a lock of hair away from her forehead. His eyes were tender and unyielding.

"You wanted family, Rey. I'm offering you one. Luke Skywalker could have, the Resistance could have, but they didn't. But I'll train you. Everything you ever wanted to learn, I'll teach you. Everywhere you ever wanted to go, I'll take you. You'll never be alone. I'll be your master, and you'll be everything you were ever meant to be."

Kylo Ren, teach her? Her thoughts darted until they blurred and became sluggish. She was horrified. Revolted. Even frightened.

But not enough. Not enough that something in her, something buried deep, wasn't excited.

She turned again, her back to him, so he wouldn't see her face and know.

She was afraid, very much afraid, that he already did.

No. Rey shored up her belief, the thing that had gotten her through so many years of longing and deprivation: It was impossible; she was not drawn to him. His dreams were infecting her. She had to get out of this house, off this planet, before she became as lost as he was. "You think I'll just give in?"

"Not at all; I know you. You'll want to fight, you'll try to fight. But you'll lose. Because the one you'll really be fighting against is yourself."

He pulled back from the railing. She didn't turn, but she could hear him move to the door.

"Welcome home, Rey."