He could not make Princess Leia laugh.
Prixati Rell had received her smile, yes. Thrilled to it back on Yavin IV, just after he joined the Alliance. Any notice from the Princess had delighted Prixati then, even if, had he the critical insight to note it, he'd rather expected her esteem. Assumed it would rapidly accrue, in fact, once she got to know him. Once he'd scaled the ranks to her favor.
He'd seen bootleg footage of the Death Star's explosion. Galactically censored by the Empire but it was irrepressible, the holonet transmission that launched a worldswide wave of enlistments. But it wasn't the magical trajectory of the instantly iconic X-wing that shook Prixati from his own complacent, pampered course. That demanded he abandon his business career, his old-money Shaugh Coroneti clan, their plans for him. That made him leave Mykell, the girlfriend he'd only just chosen a spectacular green stone for in West Coronet's exclusive jewellery quarter.
That spark, for Prixati Rell, came later.
It was one night a few weeks after. At a gambling party in the penthouse apartment of a partner from the investment firm where he worked, Prixati busted out fast at sakresh, so he idly watched the random holofiles projected on the wall-sized media screen. A steady stream of interplanetary gags, practical jokes, speeder mishaps, luxury sportship ads; the ubiquitous pornography that fuelled so much bankers' entertainment. Are we not Coroneti males? the loudest fund manager, Evor Pano, heckled Prixati whenever he objected to that. It's the rules.
Prixati looked hurriedly away from yet another carnal act. Thinking, unwillingly, of Mykell: he guessed he loved her, definitely had certain feelings for her, but they were waiting until their wedding night for, well. That. Was their chastity part of the reason he'd presented her with the emerzel? Or was it that his father exulted over what an asset Mykell would make, should Prixati someday wish to run for mayor? Marriage was a contract, Cyro Rell advised his sons, and a man must market wisely for a bride. As he would a ship! There were rules for it, negotiation, selection. Price. And somehow, it was as though protecting this investment that Prixati dropped his eyes from the sight of writhing bodies, set to pulsing sound that throbbed not in the ears but in the—
It was the abrupt change in music that jerked Prixati's attention back to the screen. Trumpets, triumphant fanfare. He saw huge sliding doors: the tall man first. Serene blond boy. Wookie. Not a habitual drinker, Prixati was tipsy enough to record them only in the abstract, the male trio striding the broad aisle to...an altar? He didn't connect their frames, their faces to the names that had so quickly become culturally familiar—even if, in the Empire-moneyed circles Prixati travelled, spoken only in uneasy whispers.
But Prixati knew the girl standing alone on the dais. Knew the stunning face from the holopapers; the tiny figure, crown of hair; delicate shoulders, spine, fine chin. Huge sable eyes, sad, wise. Unknowable grief making her mere appearance an act of breathtaking defiance.
Prixati Rell trembled with the awe, the honor of bearing her witness: Leia Organa, the Last Princess.
Those terrorists about to marry each other? Pano hollered from his repulsor recliner, to general snickering. Then he leaned forward, peering at the regal girl in the silver collar. Shiiiit. Pano, another wellborn Shaughnessi, liked to swear as though he was native to the Number Five Kasava. Look at that dress.
Do you know who that is? Prixati forced the words through numb, outraged lips.
Sure. Hot piece of ass made it off Alderaan. Swiping his just-spiced nose on a diament-linked cuff, Pano switched the scene to a chained, writhing Twi'lek dancer. Hey! There's a job for an ex-Princess—
The room exploded in goatish laughter.
Prixati Rell got up and left.
XXXXXXXXX
He soon found it at home, in the fine suite allotted him in his parents' manor when he reached majority. The full ceremony, not just the brief clip, and in the highest definition credits could buy. Yes, this must be Luke Skywalker; smaller, slighter and smilier than he'd pictured, shorter than Prixati, few years younger. Similar coloring to his, blond, blue-eyed. The Wookie was...well, a Wookie. Not much to factor there. Fangs. Garbled roar. Plentiful hair.
It was with a shock of mixed pride and rivalry that Prixati recognized the tall man for worldfellow. Only a Corellian would so assuredly take the lead—the focus of the attention, but also of any danger—down the aisle. But. Not only was this man Corelli-born, Prixati felt suddenly, unaccountably sure, he was from Coronet.
Further even to that: he was Coroneti of a certain type.
Prixati involuntarily thought this last in his mother's lofty tone. Then heard his father's slur, spoken with comfortable contempt whenever traffic rerouted them through the slums of East Coronet: dirty 'stucken. And that's what both Cyro and Darga thought, that the Coroneti underclass were mired, stuck in a pit of their own bad choices. This was, if you asked the Rells, reflection of a natural order that precluded the trouble of public education, accessible medicine. They begrudged even food! When he was a teenager Prixati had seen, from their luxury speeder window, a sandwich passed by a nurse to a ragged girl beggar his own age. In the front seat Darga benignly sighed, shook her head, as though neglect was the only true compassion.
At his mother's queenly exhaustion, it had risen in him: an instinctive feeling of, if not quite injustice, then imbalance: the sick suspicion that all the wild privileges his family enjoyed—what his parents called their successes—came at the expense of someone else. That the Rells could live at the rarefied level they did only because that street-girl lived as she did. He'd suppressed the thought; had to, to go on in his own life. But watching the other Corellian stride toward the podium, Prixati felt it again now, a defensive shame hot and itchy as a half-healed cut.
Hipshot walk. Broken nose, curl to the lip. Right hand curled too, slightly at his long thigh, where he wore his blaster with all the brusque honesty of his scar.
Han Solo was unmistakably Estok.
Yet not 'stuck at all, Father, Prixati thought, and a new feeling welled in his throat, cancelling out the flare of guilt: a peculiar, childlike, aggrieved betrayal, like finding out Father Vintner was a myth. His parents had misrepresented something essential. For there Han Solo was, easily climbing the stairs to the celebratory podium where she stood. To Princess Leia.
And Prixati Rell was not. Prixati Rell, for all his parents had glibly assured him about himself, sat like a nesting doll in damask robe in his tanned-nerf chaise in his sumptuous set of rooms, upholstered with silks and fitted with fine woods, glinting metals. Prixati Rell was getting no medal. Prixati Rell, thank you all so much, was going to be woken at dawn by his valet with kaffe and toast, and then eight lengths in the pool before work he didn't need to go to in the first place.
On his datapad screen, Princess awaited her honorees with no impatience or discomfort in her person, just—timelessness. Grace. She smiled warmly at the Wookie, at Skywalker. These interactions felt right to Prixati, so right he forgot them immediately. It was Princess Leia's interaction with Han Solo that Prixati never forgot. The brief, recorded chemical reaction that worked its way under his skin, altered his life forever.
As Prixati watched, Han Solo halted the proper number of steps below the Princess—rules of royal approach that an Estok surely hadn't known but had been directed to follow, and he did to the letter. But then Solo broke them, fast and deliberate as if he'd snapped some holy tablet in half over his strapped knee. He held the Princess' eyes and smiled at her—smiled! in the regal presence, at such formal occasion!—wide and unabashed, even delighted, as though all he'd ever felt about himself was pride. He was too big to be boyish, too common to be so relaxed. He was not solemn, he was not grateful! If anything, Han Solo was playful. Playful, in the sight of this exquisite marble martyr.
Prixati ground his teeth.
Princess Leia looked levelly back at Solo, then reached for a medal. Solo's medal, first. Solo ducked his disgracefully shaggy head, humble and correct, but when he rose with her gold around his neck—oh, when he rose, Prixati caught a shocked, indignant breath at the light in his unusual eyes. A daring so brazen that it suddenly seemed as though Solo had stopped where he did on the steps not out of propriety, but to place himself at perfect height to steal her kiss.
And then Solo did it, went further. With no knowledge, ever, that his gesture would be the catalytic grit forming Prixati Rell's life-altering decision like seastone in an Eastern Ocean oyster.
Han Solo winked.
Winked! At Princess Leia. Prixati cursed aloud with the outrage of it. Somehow it was worse, to him, then Pano's crudeness—that was just absurd, royalty made dancing girl. But to wink at her: wink? This Estok? Unthinkable cheek. Like this finest of ladies was a cantina maid who'd brought him ale. No, worse again: like a private joke, like they were friends, or if not yet, then they could be, that Solo felt they would be: an inevitability, that a Princess succumb to his rough charm.
Prixati waited for the Princess to put Solo in his place. She had that severity to her affect, an exacting judgement that surely made her accolades all the sweeter to receive.
But she did not. The Princess did not frown, she did not scowl. She did not snap her slender fingers and demand the upstart's removal to the tower. In fact, she looked away so wryly, so swiftly, that Prixati could swear she was hiding a laugh. Yes, unmistakable amusement illuminated the features she kept elegantly still. Even as she turned to complete her ceremonial obligations.
But before she did that, Prixati glimpsed her flash of curiosity. Pleasure. Yes, as though she hadn't quite made up her mind about Han Solo, and liked the puzzle—and Prixati's heart sank to see it, to know it, that Solo was as intriguing, as faceted as he was flat. As rare and wild as Prixati Rell was settled, dutiful banker as opposed to trigger finger. That scar. Prixati ran a hand over his own unmarred jaw, satiny with expensive balm. Lords, even Solo's eyes were strange, a high, lupine green, lighter than emerzel but flaring Corellian interest all the same.
That wink. That slight, affecting tug to her tender pink lips.
There was a distance, the difference between Shaugh and East Coronet, and for the first time a Rell felt this gulf in his disfavor.
So. No matter what Prixati Rell told the Alliance enlistment panel, no matter what he he told others and himself so insistently and often even he believed it later, it wasn't Skywalker's already-iconic shot that made Prixati spring up that instant and pack a bag. Purposely light, in repudiation of everything around him. I'm a survivor too. It was not zealotry, not ethics that made Prixati go down to the Rell hangar, set out in the Fortunas Rex; send text-notes to his parents, brothers, to Mykell only once he was safely past the system. It was never what was right that drove him, never a hatred of tyranny, never a principled commitment to freedom or peace.
It was envy.
Prixati wanted that gold for himself. But not any gold; gods, his own home was inlaid with the metal everywhere you looked, he'd never even liked it. Yet he felt the weight of it at his breastbone as he flew toward Yavin, heard the whisper of royal fingers on that shimmersilk ribbon as she strung the medal over his neck. Without that weighty accolade Prixati felt without gravity, even on cruising autopilot. He felt a lack. Like the medal was his, meant for him, and some slick pickpocket had lifted it.
With a wink.
XXXXXXXXX
On Yavin IV, Prixati Rell conceded that, in person, Solo had ruffian appeal, if you were partial to his type. An undeniable presence, a brute charisma. But he swore with the filthiest verve and imagination, making Prixati wince. Solo was a contractor, further to that—not even a member, and the Rebels seemed not to fault him—many liked him, he was even valuable to them. It galled Prixati to see Solo across the hangar, common smuggler working on that clunky beast (the Rells had never been partial to the vulgar YT line) as though he had every right to be there—even though the rules, plain as porridge in the Alliance handbook, stated that parking bays were accessible to enlisted forces only.
He walked with loose disdain and keen eyes. Seemed to run on skepticism and attitude, that blaster at his thigh. Uncouth, to wear it as much as he did: along the corridors, in the dining hall, even to the ragtag but charming social events put together by the Rogues. Must he declare it, his danger? Like an adder? Prixati was decent with a blaster, too, but he would rather his compatriots knew he trusted them than wear such glaring leather warning.
For his part, Solo took no interest in Prixati. Those eyes—even stranger yet in the flesh, they seemed to change color with the light, which surely signified an Estok fickleness in his nature—flicked right over Prixati, resolutely empty. This was even worse because often both men worked late on their ships, several bays apart but in the hangar alone together, and still nothing but crude Corellian curses issued from Han Solo's lips! And these only to himself, his huge hairy pet, or his ungainly ship. Those jungle nights, Prixati felt like a ghost haunting the luxurious Rexi—if a sweaty phantom. But, Corellian physiology or no, he refused to shed his coverall. Someone had to show that not all their folk were so classless to strip to white undershirt, torn across the chest.
Tasteless.
It irritated Prixati, his nonexistence felt paradoxically personal: like any acknowledgement at all—even open dislike—was a qualifier that Solo slyly chose to withhold. But this supposition led in turn to uncomfortable thoughts of—why would he want Han Solo's notice, good or bad? Did that not warn of a certain weakness to Prixati's character? So he soon chose to think Solo was simply unobservant, didn't know he was there. Or, perhaps, Solo was ignorant of Prixati's status, a worldsfellow, a cityfellow even. Or-or—most reassuring still—Solo well knew that Prixati was a Rell, and was observing social caste.
Prixati could almost feel expansive toward him then, if not quite friendly, to consider Solo as insecure due to his inferior class. Close enough to hear Solo speak, the laconic drawl fooled Prixati not at all; even in that voice all the women loved (ugh) jagged Olys inflections gouged his eardrums. (Wedge Antilles' homespech was better, though you couldn't say Wedge was quite impressed, either, when Prixati referenced his family name.)
The dream of enlistment fell short in many ways. The moon was hot, the work unglamorous; no conflicts, and training was exhausting. Flight and blaster drills, monotonous. He enjoyed the socializing, liked the people; the food was uninspired. No action! And the cause—the cause, most days, seemed nebulous to Prixati. He felt, often, as though he were on a long, strange vacation, like his fellow bankers went on to prove their toughness to themselves and other men. Bare-bones camping. Swimming with sharks.
Leia Organa made it all worthwhile.
Onscreen she was lovely. In person, she was an impossible force: a celestial event. She made the mouth hang open, drew the eyes, commanded attention. Luminous as a dew-moon, yet intense as a sun. Regal even in her plain fatigues. If Solo was charismatic, then Leia (it was difficult to call her that even in his thoughts, but she insisted, though Prixati just as insistently addressed her with honorifics) was magnetic.
Utterly magnificent.
That, Father, is a woman.
Her smile. Princess Leia's smiles. He counted them, classified them, hoarded and gloated over them like a Billinus dragon. When Prixati volunteered first to tackle a nasty chore, or offered her his seat in the mess hall (she always refused, with the most charming blush), offered to show her some tricks to fix the X-wing she trained on, Leia smiled at him and he knew it was trite but it was—it was like light, a light shining in all the heretofore unknown corners of his mind, his heart, his soul and he could see into himself: Prixati Rell! Knew the man he would become, with her help.
But then he heard her laugh.
Leia's laugh! it was rich, carbonated and energizing as fizz-kaffe. He heard it the first time with, of all beings, Chewbacca. Chewbacca! Prixati supposed it was amusing, in the manner of any mascot. But Leia didn't laugh indulgently at it—him?—as at a gamboling lothkitten; she laughed naturally as though she understood his warbles. She laughed immediately and frankly, at unladylike volume, jerking Prixati's head up as he polished the chromium plating on his ship. She laughed, in fact, knowingly, wickedly, as though the Wookie had made a witticism.
The giant being and the tiny were watching Han Solo when she laughed. Watching the swearing smuggler tangling with that doubtfully-rigged radar dish on that scientist's monster he called the Falcon. He inched out on a slender mech's scaffolding pole above the roof, hair standing up every which way, shirtless—it was a powerfully hot tropical day, but shirtless! His long legs, emblazoned with the brave stripe Prixati was vexed to discover Solo had earned and not stolen—Han has both classes, actually, Leia had said through her beautiful teeth when Prixati had expressed genteel surprise at this—remained wrapped with blue cloth for traction, but his sweating arms slipped.
With a squawk Solo swung around the pole, leaving him dangling upside down from his bent knees. Not in any danger; he was over thick rubberized safety mats that his Wookie had laid out beneath him, making a sound that was almost scolding. Solo swung gently a moment, looking like some huge, tanned Dathomiri bat. Then, his face determined, he lunged upward at trim waist. Performing a kind of reverse sit-up, Han lunged for the bar with a paw, and missed.
And then the Wookie had grunted his primitive joke and Leia Organa had...laughed.
This scene jolted Prixati in much the same way the medal ceremony had. Why, precisely? It was hard to say; something in the unashamed verve of Leia's laugh, the way Han Solo shot her a hot look back. A smile tugging at his taunting lips, as skewed as everything on his stupid stupid stupid ship.
Gemme down from here y'big furball, Han yelled, and Leia cupped her hands at her red lips to call back sorry, Mr. Solo, assistance for Alliance personnel only! And this got a laugh back from Han, big lusty sound that made Leia's eyes shine.
Eyes that should, really, be averted from this bared male torso for seemliness.
Prixati knew, by then, that the two were friendly. They'd recently gone on that Coronet mission together, the one Prixati was sure he'd be tapped for. It was a tremendous success, apparently, though the details were kept maddeningly under wraps. But even he could see the two were closer than ever, thick as thieves—thick as pickpockets, Prixati thought sourly. Conspiratorial looks in briefings, coming back from training together. Skywalker with them, often, but—it was different, with Han and Leia. Lords, and people started to say it that way, too, toward the end of the Rebels' station on Yavin: Han-and-Leia.
Ah fucksake, Han Solo sighed, resignedly swinging, folding his arms across his bare chest. And not only did Leia Organa not icily withdraw from his obscenity, she laughed again. Fondly. Affectionately! Prixati had the intuition that Han Solo was performing for her, yet again. Like the wink. The liberty of him. How could a Princess allow it? If she were not so spectacular, so beautiful and clever, Prixati would almost think less of her for it.
XXXXXXXXX
It was two weeks on Hoth, Han Solo finally nowhere to be seen—Solo had not made the move from Yavin at the same time, and so Prixati had assumed he'd grown bored and moved on, in the feckless and selfish way of his kind—that Prixati invited the Princess aboard the Rexi for dinner. He liked to cook, had many all-world delicacies preserved in his stores, as he was delighted to discover now that the novelty of roughing it, of toughness, had worn off. Leia would welcome a return to the luxurious standards of her upbringing.
But Leia had refused an evening dinner. Refused afternoon drinks. She had, when politely pressed, agreed to come aboard for morning tea—which, though he hadn't meant it as a test, Prixati approved of, being the most appropriate choice for a Princess—and she'd smiled and thanked him. But lately, Prixati did not prize Leia's smiles so much: they made him think of the engraved platinum plaque given to his father when he retired from CorelliaBank, set with jewels of incalculable value. Beautiful, impersonal. Worth more than an Estok house.
By now Prixati knew she gave them out often, these smiles, and they did not always reach her trademark eyes. Not because she was a fake, of all things the Last Princess of Alderaan was not that. But because her resources had been so diverted, here on Hoth—he saw her shivering, sometimes, when no one was looking—she did not have the heat to spare. It was a matter of survival, and even Prixati, more frustrated and bored by the day, did not begrudge her that. She was an essential figure to the galaxy; he was not.
There was coolness to those public smiles. Restraint. No radiant starlight burst, not like with...the Estok. And Prixati hadn't imagined Leia like that, had he? No, he had imagined her merging with him, with his heroism.
Still, this was Hoth. He would simply have to work harder to warm her.
Prixati had offered to show Han Solo the Rexi, back on Yavin, just before they transported out. He told himself he was being nice, but in truth he was trying to force an acknowledgement of what was, by now, thickly unspoken mutual antipathy. Force some contest. Hey Solo, he'd said, in front of a group, so they'd know who the good guy was, the righteous victim was, when Solo ignored him yet again. Would you like the chance to come aboard a Nubian Customclass?
The Customclass was an impossible machine, impossible dream, impossible to attain unless you were, in fact, a scion of Rell means. The magnanimous sweep of Prixati's extended arm somehow expressed this exclusivity. But Han, undershirted and bloodstriped as ever, had slid his mechstylus behind his ear, tilting his head with a look of flinty bemusement, as though Prixati had insulted him—or clumsily tried—instead of making a frankly generous invitation.
Solo cocked his hip and said, stretching his long tawny arms above his head, the only words he had yet addressed directly to Prixati Rell. I have had the chance, Solo almost yawned but in a measured way, to come aboard a Nubian Customclass. He turned those gold eyes directly onto Prixati's. Tekkis ta.
And it was Solo's lack of emphasis on the suggestive words, it was the bitter punch he gave the Estok phrase for thanks, it was the unhurried stretch of the long, lean body afforded him by nothing but luck, that made the implication unmistakable. Made the Rogues laugh. Made Prixati so angry he had to smile helplessly back, blinking his own blue eyes fast, trying to think of a retort. Later he thought, seethingly awake in his plush king bunk, that the problem with men like Solo was that they confused their cynicism with authenticity. Their life-struggles with strength. Poverty with resilience!
He should have said all that, against the sexual declaration of Solo's stretch. He would have, if Princess Leia had been there. Leia was not there, but she was all Prixati could think of, finally dropping off to sleep: that was the man who got Leia Organa's real smiles. The smiles that lit her entire face the way Prixati had once felt spotlit himself, by her attention.
When Prixati showed Leia the Fortunas Rexi she was faultlessly gracious. Kept her dainty hands neatly at her sides as she followed his tour. She asked intelligent questions, but all the while he sensed other thoughts—calculations?—clicking along behind her stunning eyes. Sensed another self, one he could not reach. Know. Touch. He joked, he joshed, and she smiled; but there was no laugh.
Prixati knew Princess Leia was at war. He knew she'd lost her planet, was sworn to avenge it; it wasn't as though he expected her to be impressed with the 'fresher's rhodium faucets. But the state-of-the-art missile array? Maybe a little?
As the Princess finished her tea and rose to take modest leave before eleven am, one of those crisp smiles on her face, Prixati sighed. Leia was royalty, she'd been reared in wealth and title far surpassing his own, she wouldn't be floored with the Customclass the way that, say, Mykall was when she first saw it. No, Prixati didn't assume she'd rate the ship itself but—what it was worth? Yes! Leia was bright; he'd expected her to connect the Rexi's splendour with Prixati's willingness to sacrifice it. He'd expected appreciation of his largesse, of this irreplaceable and unique asset freely risked in service to her cause.
Maybe she'd express her gratitude in a laugh. A look up at him, a new wonder in those sparkling eyes.
But Princess Leia left, touching almost nothing on the Rexi. Certainly not the way he'd so often seen her trailing her fingers along the battered plating of the Falcon. Sometimes giving it a pat. As though it was a living, breathing creature instead of an indefensible eyesore!
XXXXXXXXX
That evening, Han Solo came back. Well, not back, he'd not yet been to Hoth, but I came back was the only way to describe the look on Solo's face when he appeared in the icy archway of the mess hall, leaning there for full obnoxious effect. Tired face, but eyes avidly scanning the long tables, click, click, clearly not seeing what—who—he wanted among the beings making up the third supper shift.
Prixati waved at him, snidely, before he could stop himself. Solo smiled back, bright and hard and animal. Prixati dropped his eyes. He'd never before suffered from attitude like this, but damn hell son of a bitch, it was cold.
And Han Solo was back.
There was only one word for it: fuck!
Not spying Princess Leia in the mess, Solo left, turning on his boot with that maddening nonchalance. Prixati was grateful. He didn't want to see big brown eyes widen, pool, at the return of the smuggler. The Princess had seemed anxious, over tea—well, in truth, for the last two weeks—and Prixati didn't want to see that tenseness loosen and know missing Han Solo, fearing his loss, was the reason for it all along.
But what Prixati saw was worse than that.
After his awful dinner he went back to his ship. He was outraged to discover, in the hangar, that the Rexi and the Falcon were berthed next to one another. The YT probably had spacelice. Prixati stalked into his lift, was whooshed up to his bunkroom level—openly sulky now, he could admit it, and he missed his old self, his affable and easy self. Prixati missed picnics, and personal chefs, and whirlpool baths. Driving a speeder! He missed Mykell, missed his mother and father. Brothers. He didn't miss banking, but perhaps a run for mayor—
It was the sound of the Falcon's lowering ramp that woke him. After twelve, and Prixati rubbed his eyes, sat up. His bunk was lined with a bay porthole, and through a narrow slice in its sheer suns-cover which Prixati kept closed against the harsh lights of the hangar, he saw two figures.
Han Solo was the one elevated this time, at the high end of the ramp. He stood as though waiting, as Princess Leia once had for him; his face expectant, hopeful, open in a way Prixati could not have imagined. He did not wear his blaster; he wore frayed sleep-trousers and the ugliest shirt Prixati Rell had ever seen! Tight and lurid yellow, and what was that faded creature screen-printed between Solo's stupid pectorals? A Wasskah vulture?
Whether heroes' trappings, medal and bloods, or malformed bird-shirt and shabby trousers, it didn't matter: his female visitor's voice was filled with warmth. Light. A glow in her perfect, pearly face, tinted pink and tilted up at Han Solo from the base of the ramp.
Past midnight, and Leia Organa was leaving the Millennium Falcon.
Han Solo was at such a height difference from the tiny Princess that he would have had to bend near in two, this time, to steal that kiss, the one Prixati had conjured, resented, back in his old home. He'd have to fold at the torso, the way he did the day he slipped on the scaffold, half-naked and dangling, making her laugh. Laughing back.
But tonight the pair were not laughing; they were looking, fixed, at one another. Solo said something—Prixati could not make out the words, just the low rumble of his voice. The sweet alto of hers in response, and in the middle of it, Han reached to tuck an auburn lock behind Leia's ear.
She stopped speaking.
This was it! The worst smashing of rules yet. Her sacred hair. And Han Solo touched it. Touched Princess Leia's hair with his oil-stained Estok fingers, a familiarity that made Prixati fairly gasp, lean forward with relish.
Leia did not rebuke him. There was no maidenly blush, even as Han's knuckles curved toward her cheek. She did not retreat, in fact she leaned forward, up on her white-kid toes and forward, Leia Organa a much more forward woman than Prixati had expected. She looked up at Han Solo with parted lips and such—fire in her eyes, searching fire. Touched her gaze to his like a match and his own eyes went up in it, those strange tiger's eyes, up with his own heat. Han leaned, swift and neat; he would kiss her, in that instant, and what was this—no, what?! she, the wee grieving Princess, clad always so appropriately in white, looked ready to grab him by his dumb yellow collar and—
If that useful gold droid hadn't come along then, just in time, Han Solo would have kissed her. Kissed her! Pressed that sly, insolent mouth to the perfect ruby lips of the Holy Princess. Tasting her worth. Easing her grief.
Forget her laugh. Prixati Rell wanted that.
