A/N: (Jan 7 2020) Alright, new chapter(s) from now on, folks! I will post again soon! Enjoy!
Guest - chapter 23 - Feb 3: Thank you so much for your review and I am so sorry for the long hiatus there! Yes, Ben´s dreams are echoes of his grandfather´s (Anakin) grief for his mother (Schmi) and how that mirrors Ben and Leia having lost each other essentially. Not going to give away any spoilers here but the knights do have a role to play still, if they´re all trustworthy though... ;) Luckily Ben and Rey have each other!
Guest - chapter 23 - May 11: I appreciate that nudge you gave me last summer, it gave me that extra push I needed to get back to this story and, although it took me a couple of months to actually write the last chapters, I did manage to do it and reviews like yours definitely helped me along the way!
Guest - chapter 23 - Jul 18: Thanks for your review, here´s that update! (Better late than never, right? haha)
Guest - chapter 18 - Aug 12: Thank you so much for your concern, I´m feeling better now, still struggling a bit with RL but I´m glad I completed this story so I can share it with all of you now: so sorry about the wait!
Guest - chapter 23 - Sep 14: Your words of encouragement and concern really touched me, thank you so much for reaching out and writing me this review: it definitely motivated me to return to this story: THANK YOU!
Admiral T. DeVanto - chapter 23- Feb 4: SO sorry about my late reply and for leaving you this long on this cliffhanger...sorry! Thank you for your review though! Yup, General Sly-Fox just had to ruin this party didn´t he? ;) Let´s hope Ben and Rey will get out of this unscathed...and together... da da da duuuum! (might be another cliffhanger coming, they´re just too much fun haha)
Hartmannclan - several chapters incl. chapter 23 - Jan 4: THANK YOU for your bombardment of reviews, I found them in my inbox right about the same time I wrote the final chapters for this story, talking about timing! ;) I really appreciate your encouragement and hope you´ll enjoy the remaining chapters of this story!
CHAPTER 24
Ben barely had time to register the strange bracelet lying in her outstretched hand—it was like she offered him something he did not yet recognize, and it could spell both salvation and downfall. If it hadn't been exposed. Seen by the wrong eyes. But it had been. And all he instinctively understood now was that Hux could use it as a weapon against them. That he would.
The blue, pulsating glare still plagued his vision when he swiveled around and even the instant activation of his saber could not immediately annul the after-image burned on his retinas. The aggressive snarl of his weapon caused most of their audience to scramble to get out of the way, but a few remained. They cowered behind their host Lady Varess, whose measuring gaze flicked from Hux to himself as if she was deciding which fathier to bet on.
"Careful, General, the only one at risk of being hanged as a traitor is you if you're foolish enough to repeat that accusation against your Empress," Ben spat angrily, lifting the beam of red, crackling energy to point at Hux—he took another arrogant step closer regardless.
"I'm afraid that fault really lies with you, my Emperor," the General pointed out with evident relish. "Seeing your murder of Supreme Leader Snoke proved a little…messy to retrieve from those stormtroopers' minds, you gave me no choice but to look for other evidence. For another traitor. One who was actually careless enough to leave a trail behind her."
Hux's cruel gaze shifted to Rey instead, his mouth curving in a sneer. "I must thank you, Empress, for your wonderfully predictable display of heroism. It provided us with just the proof we needed to link you with the remnants of the Resistance."
"What are you talking about—" Ben demanded. Fury and fear intermingled in his gut and his hand wringing even tighter around his saber when Hux cut him off—his expression one of gloating superiority.
"Your scavenger," he pronounced the word as if it tasted foul and disgusting on his tongue, "is holding a binary beacon. One of two. Only two. We may not be able to track the cloaked signal, the fact that it is one of a pair means that their energy patterns are identical. That device's pattern"—Hux stretched out an accusatory hand towards Rey—"is a perfect twin of the one we picked up at Crait when our sensors swept the mines our pathetic enemy had crept in to hide."
His own mind still puzzling together the new and old pieces, Ben drew in a sharp breath at the panicked whirl that the Force around Rey became at the revelation. At the exposure?
But she couldn't have betrayed him. Wouldn't have...
For the briefest moment he felt that old familiar distrust and anger flare up inside him, threatening to consume him—to have him lash out at the alleged traitor and have her suffer as she denied her betrayal or died for admitting it was true. True that she had been in contact with the Resistance. That she was still loyal to them and not...not to him. Him and the future they could have.
It took all that he had in him to repress that urge—to tame and defeat it before it could take over. Before it could blind him. He understood now. That impulse was a lie. It had been his desperate attempt to quench the hurt and pain caused by others. The fear that they would do so again. And he had hurled all of it at his enemies—but it had only dug deeper and eaten away at himself instead.
Ben swallowed hard, forcing himself to steady his breathing—to be in control of the turmoil of emotions that he had feared and which had been in control of him for too long. He reached out to Rey, carefully enveloping her broiling, scared energy with his own. She shuddered at the ethereal touch—cowered almost—but then recognized its protective warmth and let it seep into the Force around her.
Hux took another confident step closer so he could look down on Rey: a calculating predator tightening the circle around its prey. "You may have manipulated this monster of a man to try and get rid of the data we found on Crait—to perhaps warn your rebel scum friends to find a different hidey-hole—but did you really think General Organa can continue to elude us?"
Hux regarded her scornfully, then tutted his disapproval as if he was reprimanding a child.
Ben almost staggered as he realized what Rey had done. The surge of hatred for the man confronting them felt like a distracting, powerless current almost wholly redirected by that one compelling truth.
His mother...
She had done this to reach Leia. Not for herself. For him. To reunite them like the mother and son in his nightmares: to reverse his grandfather's true regret.
And now Rey had risked her own safety in the process...
Ben slightly lowered his saber and stretched out his other hand towards Hux instead—invisible talons clawing their way into his mind. He didn't get far. He'd only snatched at a few images and thoughts when Marrek Ren interfered. The Knight didn't move. He didn't have to. He amplified the obscure shimmer of the Force around his own mind and cast it around the General's like a net.
Ben tried again—testing the wall with his mind, careful not to reveal any weaknesses in his own as he did. It wasn't solid. It didn't need to be. Marrek simply diffused his probes, scattering its focus like static breaking up a signal again and again before it could establish itself. Ben knew he could break through it and find what he was looking for: whether Hux knew the exact location of the Resistance hideout. His mother's hideout. But it would take time—time he didn't have.
Hux winced despite Marrek's protection—his abhorrence of having to trust the sorcery he despised clearly cost him more discomfort than Ben's attempt at breaking into his mind. Being the strategist that he was, however, the General wouldn't rely on Ben's Knights— No. They were no longer his Knights. He had known it and not acted on it and now he and Rey would have to face the consequences of that dangerous mistake.
Lady Varess seemed to have come to the same conclusion, her calculating gaze gleaning the most likely outcome with the current positions of the holochess pieces before her. She gathered her dress in her hands and retreated—her head-dress sparkled with undimmed brilliance as she fled the scene along with the few bystanders who had lingered.
The elite troopers had taken advantage of the disorderly movements of fleeing guests—they slipped soundlessly between them like dark specters and formed a cordon in front of the General in seconds. Yara Ren prowled around the troopers, weaving in and out of their ranks like a snake leisurely slithering into position. She could afford to take her time. After all, with the cliffs and sea behind them, he and Rey were effectively trapped on the balcony.
'We'll have to fight our way out...'
His thought reached Rey's mind at the same time that slender blasters were raised at them as one. Rectangular, body-long shields sprang to life with a clinical, collective buzz—their energy fields transparent save for the occasional ripple of bluish energy.
'We did it before.' Her voice sounded confident in his head. Stubborn most of all.
'When we both had lightsabers,' he remarked, fear gripping at his throat at the realization she had nothing but an old blaster in her hand.
'Then I just need to get my hands on one...'
Ben felt her tense as Marrek's mace burst into life at her tell-tale glance alone. The Knight lunged forward in the same instant. He moved to block it with his saber, Rey's lonely blaster bolts ricocheting against the hilt of the mace deliberately angled to catch them.
Then the splintered rays of hellish blue were met with a rain of red spewing out of the elite troopers' weapons and pelted towards the both of them...
(…)
Next to her Ben's saber was a red blur. It growled as it parried the blows of Marrek's mace, then whirled through the air to devour as many of the blaster bolts as it could until the Knight's next attack.
Rey gnashed her teeth. Once again, she had been the naive scavenger from Jakku who'd wanted to fight the fights she picked, not the ones she was lured into. It was hard not to feel that she'd failed Ben. She had acted intuitively and as a result they now found themselves outnumbered and driven into a corner. The sound of the violent waves far below were perfectly fitting—its rhythm ominous and offering no escape.
She needed all of her focus to read the Force flowing between herself and Ben, connecting her to his movements as if they were her own. Every slight jolt of surprise or annoyance telling her which bolt was going to find a way through and when.
Rey swiveled on the balls of her feet to dodge those bolts that did slip through and kept up a steady stream of blaster fire. She reached out with the Force to claw at the shields that absorbed what seemed like every bolt she fired or that Ben sent back at them with his saber.
She failed more times than she succeeded. Only a few shields perished and the shots from her blaster were barely able to hit their targets or redirect the bolts racing towards them. Most collided in a glaring clash of colors with a harsh zing—the particles scattering like fireflies.
They weren't as harmless as fireflies though...
Some zipped past her ears, missing her by inches and hammering the pillars behind them—sending chunks of marble flying. Others grazed her face and body; sand grains in a sandstorm that were so hot they seared her skin and tore sharp hisses of pain from her lungs before she could stop them.
Ben visibly tensed, sharing in the sensation as she felt another fractured particle tear the skin on her knuckles so that the blaster clattered from her grasp—the barrel molten and smoking. She flexed her fingers to assure herself she still could and regretted it instantly. He nearly winced too now their entwined energies caused his hand to twitch in phantom agony. Ben grunted angrily when the split-second of distraction was enough for Marrek to swing his mace wide. Ben had to leap backward to avoid getting cut in half—his balance wavered as he tried to regain his footing.
Balling her fist around the beacon and trying not to get swept up in the surge of guilt and shame as it dug into her palm, Rey ducked low and out of the path of the barrage of blaster fire. She had no more than a few heartbeats to stop the Knight taking advantage of Ben's instability. Acting on instinct more than strategy she grabbed the long hilt of the mace to add her weight to his next strike. It went awry because of it—so did she.
Rey was nearly flung away—the Knight's strength having built up a momentum she couldn't undo. Her arm felt like it would be ripped from its socket. Then there was a familiar crackle and a flurry of red. She rolled her body into a ball to break her fall—one hand still clutching the beacon, the other holding on to the mace's hilt which had been cut in half by Ben's saber.
A wry grin tugged at the corner of her mouth as she eyed the new weapon in her hands. It wasn't a saber yet but it already felt more familiar than the blaster had done. It also soon felt equally inadequate now Marrek resorted to a Force push when she charged at him as Ben resumed their duel.
Hilt uselessly in her fist she soared through the air—weightless in her own body but grounded at the same time through Ben's boots placed firmly on the floor. She latched onto the latter sensation through their bond, following it to an unseen string tying her to him. She pulled it taut, the wave of the Force that had her flying now passing through and releasing her. She half fell, half landed against the balustrade of the balcony, elbow ramming into her rib which she swore let out an audible crack.
Rey had barely gasped for breath when she heard Ben's panicked 'Watch out!' in her head and registered the shadow gliding noiselessly toward her.
Praying her makeshift weapon would hold against whichever the other Knight used, she scrambled to her feet and blocked its downward blow. The impact rattled her bones and instantly drove her to her knees again.
Yara Ren's slender mask tilted but a fraction, the metallic rivers running across it glinting as if in mockery. Rey's eyes dropped to the serrated edge of her half-weapon, understanding dawning and sinking into the pit of her stomach like a stone: she had merely caught another hilt.
If Ben hadn't sharpened her senses along with his own, she might have missed the subtle fluctuation of the Force. Now she recognized what it meant and allowed her body to act on the insight that was both new to her and already honed through experience. To trust the Force like this still scared her, it was giving herself up to a current at once separate and part of her—of Ben. A trust that made her move faster than she would have normally been able to do.
Body slightly slanted, her head dipped to the side a mere inch. It was enough not to have it pierced by the saber erupting from the sleek hilt in Yara's gloved hand. The dark beam sputtered a guttural threat so close to her ear she could make out its low, unsettling thrum. In turn, this thrumming was offset by a high, sharp pitch that seemed to spike with the erratic veins of white gnawing on its edge.
Yara lashed out, the saber not moving through the air but slicing it apart like fabric—perhaps even moving between the infinitesimal layers between it with eerie precision and ease. It was all Rey could do to maneuver out of its path, never more than that uncomfortable inch between her and the dark beam swaying from its hilt as if it couldn't contain the intensity of its power.
The Force helped her again as she swerved to the right, then prepared to leap to avoid a quick stab at her legs. Her feet had barely left the ground when she realized the trap. Arms flailing to keep her balance she brushed the rim of the balustrade with a few toes of one foot. She twisted the Force and spun away—her body bending backwards in an arch. The saber thrust into air, tangling with the sash of her dress and cutting it in half.
'Rey!'
She held her breath and Ben's voice bounced off the inside of her skull as the silky fabric fluttered down to the sea below: a ribbon of deep blue melting with the aquamarine, churning mass. A second later her other foot touched the balustrade and she crouched down on it—the beacon nearly crushing under her palm as she grasped the smooth stone for balance.
'Easier than scaling a rusty Star Destroyer,' she assured Ben with a relief she didn't yet feel. She was far from winning this fight—surviving it would be a gift she wasn't even sure the stars would grant her.
Eyes on the saber in wary anticipation she misinterpreted its casual twirl as the forerunner of another stab. It didn't come. Yara flung out her other arm instead, her fingers sprawled as the Force rushed towards Rey.
For a heartbeat Rey felt the wave slam into her, tipping her over the edge. But before she did fall over it, the Force solidified around her, tore at her every fiber as its overwhelming current reversed and she was pulled the other way—hurled back into the arena by the Knight not willing to give up her plaything just yet. It made Yara cocky enough to release her hold halfway and let gravity decide how to throw her quarry at her feet.
It also allowed Rey to manipulate the Force just enough to mold her body into a somersault and sense rather than see the pillar Ben projected in her head. She felt his unrest and concern like a heavy tightness, it merged with her own even as her soles briefly clung to the chipped surface of the pillar and she pushed off again—the sound of his growling saber in her ears but her eyes fixed on the Knight looking out haughtily over the cliff's edge.
Yara tossed her mantle over her shoulders with a careless flick of her wrist—the breeze billowing it like ink in water and making Rey blind to the kick in her direction. The tip of a boot nearly knocked the hilt of Marrek's mace out of her grip and she staggered sideways in her desperation to hold on to it.
The Knight didn't give her a chance to restore her balance. The dark saber whirred left and right of Rey, distorting even the Force itself it seemed. Rey was pushed further and further back as she dodged and blocked strike after strike. Her own occasional jab didn't even touch so much as the swaying robe—let alone her assailant. Her own dress flowed out toward the Knight as if to ward her off—the strands of azure leaking color into the black fabric it encountered.
And then shapes moved all around her, the sudden absence of blaster bolts whizzing past pressing on her ears a split second too late as the elite troopers closed in, their weapons trained at her heart. Rey felt the blasters pulse with barely contained energy, it would take shorter than her ragged breaths for it to be released. But they didn't fire. They waited.
The lithe figure of Yara Ren stalked closer, body erect and the dark saber twirling once again almost leisurely in her hand—the tail of a panther swishing at the promise of a kill. Knowing it was paramount to move, Rey found that she couldn't. Her body was locked into place while Ben's was all movement as he hacked away at his opponent—the Force around him was a charged dynamism like a turbulent sea that was ebbing away from her then came roiling back. But his wild blows would take too long to break the Knight.
To long to reach her...
Rey desperately held on to the thread between them and wrapped herself in the warmth and strength it channeled between them: a source of comfort beyond their control but still encouragingly present.
Their bond surged with both panic and assurance as Yara struck. Rey parried it, tipping the hilt of the dark saber with her broken one. The next blow met a similar fate. The next only just missing her as she hit the Knight's armguards with a muffled thump.
And then her heels hit something cold and solid and the dark saber plunged down so close its biting energy ghosted Rey's shoulder before the fountain shattered in a storm of glass...
(…)
They were both bruised and bleeding from shallow cuts: sacrifices made to create an opening only to end up in yet another deadlock. Sweat might be trickling down his face—making his hair cling stubbornly to his temples—but Ben wasn't out of breath. He was tiring. But not spent. His opponent, on the other hand, was near it.
And still he wouldn't beat him on time!
The thought prompted a roar of frustration that made his thrust more ferocious, but it also made it more inaccurate. Marrek used the room it created to win back what little ground he'd lost, the Knight's heavy boots thudding on the floor with his untiring tenacity to keep Ben from getting to Rey.
They'd prepared this well...
Ben ground his teeth. They needed to end this. Quickly. If they still could gain the upper hand that was. His strength was seeping away more steadily with every blow he dealt or blocked—even more so seeing his duel with the Knight wasn't the only fight he was fighting. The elite troopers kept their distance—as did Hux a step or two behind them—but they continued to pour intermittent blaster fire his way. This gave Marrek a distinct advantage especially since he knew Ben's every move from their endless sparring as students and later as Knights—
As Snoke's puppets!
Ben bared his teeth as he swung again, waiting for the Knight to block it with his battered mace—the filament laser crawling over its head losing its feed now and then so that it flickered and buzzed. It wasn't any less deadly this way. It was why Ben needed to get it out of the way. Marrek took the bait and Ben threw a balled fist at him—leather creaking against his knuckles as he gathered the Force behind it and hit the center of the sober mask with a loud, steel-crunching thunk.
Marrek wavered, his mace sizzling as it scraped the floor when he sunk to one knee. Ben had his own saber raised—not knowing whether he could actually do this—but then the Force whirled in warning and forestalled the answer to that question. He recognized her energy fluttering towards him like fingers seeking certainty in the touch of his. He responded instantly at the tug on their bond—making the Force around her denser in protection as Yara struck.
There was a tremendous crash and he felt the glass dust on his own skin: saw the shards fracturing light all around her; the black armor of the elite troopers like circling, glinting shadows. Similar shapes surrounded him and Marrek now—their blasters silenced but ready to release their fatal bursts of energy. In the sudden stillness his saber crackled hungrily as it hovered inches from the kneeling Knight.
"Stalemate," a familiar voice remarked triumphantly.
Ben tore his gaze away from the steel-rimmed slits in the battered mask that appeared hollow and lifeless despite the fact that he still remembered the gray eyes hidden behind them.
"Perhaps now you will listen to reason." Hux flitted in and out of sight, his silhouette as sharp and hard as the outlines of his troopers that slid past him, or rather that he strutted behind: vivid red hair and icy hued eyes the only moving colors in a wall of black. "The kind of reason, moreover, which will tell you I am not a greedy man—"
"State your terms or I'll sever his head from his body and we'll see just how much you should fear my sorcery," Ben bit out impatiently, hating the fact that his hand trembled for a fraction of a second, the hilt hot and restless in his palm.
"Oh, I am sure my fear of a dying magic is nothing compared to the very real possibility of cutting the dwindling number of its followers by one... Or two..." Hux let the word reverberate between them, pausing to look meaningfully from the Knight at his feet to himself. He didn't need to glance over his shoulder for Ben to know who he meant by that.
That by killing Marrek he would kill another...
He swallowed hard. The dark saber was so close to Rey's throat he could feel it throb against his own and her heart pounded so hard in his ears that he doubted she'd caught any of their words.
Knowing that he had his attention, the General strode on, hands clasped behind his back. "But, as I said, I am not so avaricious to demand both an Emperor and an Empress. I do not need two to ascend the throne in your stead if one would suffice."
The chill running down his spine at the careful phrasing nearly made him jerk in fright. He felt increasingly trapped now the truth he didn't want to see—to acknowledge—was closing in more and more despite his reluctance. Rey would have compared it to a sandstorm: sudden and destructive—leaving bare in its wake the inevitability of that simple, clear choice no matter how much it had seemed buried in the sand.
What if it was the only way?
"What is it you want, Hux," Ben hissed in a low tone. It took all of his self-control to force his voice out. To keep listening—to keep loosening the thread so his growing determination didn't travel through it to Rey.
"Well, surely even you, Kylo Ren, will understand that unmasking an Emperor as the traitor he is will secure my position as Supreme Leader. Ties to a Resistance that is limping its way to their pathetic end won't nearly sell as well." Hux creased his brows as if contemplating an inconvenient compromise.
Ben felt the conviction swell in his chest, if he hadn't bent all of his will on containing it, it would've burst through his surface. It scared him how much Hux's words, how his embedded offer made sense to him—tempted him.
An Emperor for an Empress...
Himself for Rey...
"To prove my generosity is genuine," Hux went on, slipping deftly between two of his troopers now, gloved hand tugging rigorously at the cuffs of his sleeves, the hem of his long over coat flapping against the heels of his boots, "I will give you a moment to consider. You, in return, might want to use it to get your precious desert rat to your ship. A shuttle with a single passenger is of little interest to my new Star Destroyer."
The cold blue hardened around their dark pupils and Ben knew he was dangerously close to leeching from it the only hope—the only choice left now Hux had power over the one thing—the one person—he could never take down with him.
"However," Hux went on, looking deliberately troubled now though his lips still curved in a sadistic sneer, "board it together and we will blast you both out of the sky..."
(…)
The Force was pressed together so tight that the glass dust didn't settle but trickled down in its own reality of time. It rained in an almost soothing rhythm on her and the Knight—the intricate mask so close to her face Rey could count every silver rivulet weaving through its black steel.
"I told you that you were too weak to save him," Yara taunted, her silken voice softening the rawness of its usual distortion. "Too frightened of the dark side to pull him away from it. And you'll have to agree that bringing out his light hardly had the desired effect. Both of you are too weak. Made our fight easier though. Perhaps I should thank you for handing us the throne."
The Knight laughed, the metallic rasps mingling with the sound and digressing it to something less human that made the hairs on Rey's arms stand on end. Yara had never intended to help her bring Ben back to the light. Nor would she have stopped her from being sucked so far into her own darkness she would've ended up a corrupt, shell-like version of herself, like Tori Ren—
A shudder went through her as the link between her and Ben seemed to disperse—his energy flowing through her suddenly scattering and becoming elusive. She frantically groped around with the Force, trying to stop it from fracturing—from losing him.
Yara seemed not to have noticed, she simply brought a gloved hand to the chin of her mask, rubbing it as if thinking about how exactly she would decide her prey's fate. Judging by the ravenous tremor that frayed the edges of her Force signature, the Knight already derived pleasure from the prospect.
But there was no time to grow afraid when there was movement in the periphery of her vision. She could feel Ben's muscles tense then release as he broke through the elite troopers surrounding him. Her own cordon of troopers stirred a fraction in hesitation now Ben's tall shape made straight for them—his saber growling ominously.
'Rey! Now!'
His voice boomed in her head at the same moment their bond blossomed into full again—both acting like an electric jolt that urged her to move. But she didn't—not yet. Remembering that one, transcending and yet anchoring moment in the snow-covered forest on Starkiller Base, she closed her eyes instead.
Time slowed down with the deep breaths she took. The Force moved around her like a palpable but unseen current. It was everywhere. Ben was an overwhelming storm rolling over. She reached out calmly and easily joined that strong surge of energy.
Even as she swiveled out of Yara's reach, she grasped the shards floating around them with the Force—connecting them to her moving form so that they bobbed strangely in the air like they were riding the ripples in a pond.
Feet hitting the floor hard, she hurled the glittering remnants of the fountain back at the Knight. The fine grains of glass in scratched her exposed skin and rustled against the exquisite fabric of her dress as they flew past with a whispered string of chime-like chinks.
And then Ben was there and he pulled her along as they ran. It was impossible not to be reminded of Finn doing the same at Niima Outpost: her life of waiting had turned into one of fleeing.
She just hoped neither would prove to keep her equally powerless...
Maybe it didn't have to be that way. Now the First Order had turned against them, she and Ben could try to find the Resistance. They had the same goal after all. With the beacon still clutched tightly in her hand, they even had the means to contact them. Or simply find them first.
They hurtled down the broad stairs fanning out from the Villa's gates when the first blaster bolt whizzed over their heads. The Knights were leading the charge—they and the elite troopers hot on their heels like shadows that glared strangely in the bright sunlight of Cantonica.
"Quick!" Rey shouted, her lungs burning from the exertion now she was the one to pull him along. But Ben slowed down even more. She skidded to a halt, almost stumbling as a foot found the shuttle's ramp which made his fingers slip off her arm. "Ben!"
The only warning was a subtle ripple in the Force flowing between them. Rey frowned, her forehead creasing as she stared at Ben. But her instinct couldn't be right. It couldn't be—
The halo around his eyes shattered in hurt brown when his hand stretched out toward her—his gloved fingers spread out. They closed around air and her mind a split-second later. Rey's breath hitched in panic, then all sound and light were ripped away and she fell into a world of black...