They're careful not to be seen anywhere near not-Finn and not-Poe for the rest of the night.
They share two more dances, dodging waiters with their trays of caviar and alcohol, and only socializing with the few guests who dare approach Virya Vorian directly. Then it's time for Ben to leave. It is a full half hour before midnight, but it will take that long at least for him to pull off scaling an ice cliff in a blizzard. If he pulls it off at all.
He takes her into a secluded alcove where they can speak privately.
"You remember where the entrance is?"
"Yes. You only showed me four times."
"Good. And remember, don't arrive a minute before midnight. If you're early I might not be there yet."
"I know."
"I'm serious. It'll be more dangerous if I rush."
"No, I promise. Not a minute before midnight."
"Okay. The balcony door is glass, just like these ones down here. I'll smudge some snow against the lower pane when I get there. When you see it, you won't have to worry about me."
"Easier said than done," Rey mutters.
"What?"
"How can I not worry about you? Given the circumstances?"
"Don't. I'll be fine. Just worry about yourself."
"Myself? I'm not the one scaling a glacier in a blizzard without the Force."
"And I'm not the one walking into a room with the most dangerous people in the universe."
"Well, I'm not the one -"
"Hey!" Poe's voice snaps in their ears through the nano-radio. "This is adorable, guys, really. But the clock's ticking and people are starting to wonder why you're just off over there whispering. How 'bout you both agree to handle worrying about the other and call it a night?"
Rey and Ben jerk apart. She hadn't even noticed they'd been standing so close.
"We're engaged," Ben snaps. "We're supposed to go off and whisper."
"Alright well, good job, it's very convincing. Now get moving."
Ben looks once more at Rey. And then, moving all at once as if to keep from changing his mind, he leaves her standing in the alcove. Alone. Rey stares at the spot he had been, tracing his outline in empty air.
It won't be the last time you see him , she tells herself, sinking every ounce of willpower into believing it. It won't.
#
Over the next fifteen minutes, the other family members discretely slip into the corridor Ben had pointed out to her. It's simple and unassuming archway, nothing she would have investigated if she hadn't known better. The twins leave first, arm in arm. The Lannlas clan go next: two men and two women, forming a quadrant around the boy Mikael, who walks like a child emperor in their center. Jae breaks away last, finally freeing himself from his admirers. As he steps through the arch, he sends a fleeting glance Rey's way.
It is an effort to wait. Restlessness eats at her. But she'd told Ben she wouldn't arrive a minute before midnight. And he was out there, somewhere in that blizzard, out of radio range, picking his way up the ice-crusted cliff, and trusting her. The only thing she could do for him now was to keep her word.
Finally, at ten minutes to the hour, Rey hands her drink to a passing waiter and speaks so low that only the nano-radio picks her up. "Alright, time's up. I'm going in."
She slips between the crowd, making for the arch.
"Copy," Finn crackles in her ear. "If something goes wrong just call for us. If we have to, we'll storm the place and get you guys out."
"Hopefully it won't come to that," Rey smiles. "But it's nice to know you've got our backs."
"Always. But don't let your -"
She steps beneath the arch. Instantly, the orchestra and chatter of the ballroom is muted, as if the the whole party has been plunged underwater behind her. Rey turns. She can see the dancers moving in synchronized time. She can see the band, still playing their instruments with quick deftness. But any sounds of the music, talk, and laughter have been dampened. And the radio in her ear has gone dead.
"Guys. Can you hear me?" In the empty hall, Rey's whispers seem loud as screams. "Guys?"
"Virya?"
Rey turns. Jae is standing behind her, giving her a quizzical look.
"Jae," Rey says, quickly adopting Virya's accent. "Were you waiting for me?"
"I thought we might go in together. Unless… your fiancé?" Jae glances over Rey's shoulder, as if he half expects Ben to be looming in the doorway, ready to spring on him.
"I sent him away. You said to come alone."
"Well done. I wouldn't have expected it to be that easy." He offers her his arm. "They'll have to let you in if we go in together. Shall we?"
Rey hesitates. She wants an excuse to go back into the ballroom, re-establish radio with Finn and Poe, and figure out what had caused the broken connection in the first place. Something to do with the archway, if she had to guess. A jamming field she'd passed through to keep anyone from entering with a wire. It was probably just a standard security measure and nothing designed specifically for her. Probably.
Virya wouldn't have ever noticed it. And so, failing to find a good excuse, Rey links her arm in Jae's. "Lead the way then."
#
The staircase to the tower is constructed from white stone and veined with faintly glowing mineral mined from the cliffs outside. They are spiraling, elegant, and interminable. Barely big enough for Rey to walk with Jae side by side. More than once, she catches him glancing over their shoulders.
"Something wrong?" she asks.
"Ah. No. It's just… for some reason, I keep expecting your new fiancé to come storming up the steps and knife me in the back."
"I told you I sent him away."
"So you did. But he didn't seem like the type to simply take to that."
"Oh? And what type did he seem like?"
"The jealous, overly protective, and violent one."
Rey's smile twitches. If you only knew the half of it... "Well, I could always let go of your arm if you'd more secure."
Jae laughs. He squeezes gently. "No. No, we can't have that. You'll be the one to convince him to spare my life."
As they continue up the steps, Rey thinks of Ben, out there somewhere, climbing in the freezing gale, without the Force to bolster his endurance or strength. Her gut twists with every upward step, the climb which is so easy for her, yet so treacherous for him.
Stop it , she berates herself inwardly. Stop it. He's fine.
But what if he isn't?
She thinks, unbidden, of Exegol and Ben's long-limbed body plummeting into the dark.
What if?
If she walks into the tower and there is no snow smeared on the balcony door, if he has fallen to his death while she was in that stupid, pretty room with all those stupid, pretty people, smiling and laughing and pretending to be a stupid, pretty heiress while the other half of her was plummeting into a void…
"Are you nervous?" Jae says.
Rey jolts out her thoughts. "Nervous? Why would I be?"
"You wouldn't," Jae says. "But your grip says something otherwise."
Rey realizes she's clutching at Jae's arm. She forces herself to relax and tries to brush it off. "Sorry. I was just… thinking some unpleasant thoughts. It's nothing to do with you. Or with this."
"You don't need to explain yourself to me," Jae says softly. "I'm not exactly looking forward to this either."
Rey offers him a smile as they step onto the landing and find themselves in front of a stone door. Anticipation pumps inside Rey's veins. Finally, she has arrived. She expects Jae to drop her arm here, but he doesn't. They move to the door together. And together they step inside.
A long table is the first thing Rey notices, the families of the Inner Circle seated around it. On one side of the room, a stone hearth is wreathed in thick shadow by the light of a half-dead fire. And there, in the corner, a glass and steel door that must lead to the balcony. The black of night presses up against its panes, except for the lower right corner, which has an irregular smudge of snow. Rey nearly shudders in relief. Ben's made it. He's with her. Alive.
Her relief is short-lived, however, when she notices that everyone seated at the table is staring at her. The Drakuns, the Lannlas, and a austere, elderly woman with jet black hair and sharp golden eyes. Those creases deepen when she sees Rey and Jae enter the room arm in arm.
"Grandson," Her voice is deep and resinous for her wiry build. At the sound of it, Jae straightens like a soldier coming to attention.
Lady Tannias looks Rey over like a piece of livestock paraded out before her. Apparently unimpressed by what she sees, she turns her golden gaze to her Jae. "And the other one?"
The door slides shut behind them. Rey processes the strangeness of Lady Taeya's words.
The other one? But she didn't even want me here.
Rey shoots a questioning look at Jae, but he just looks fixedly at his Grandmother, shaking his head. "He wasn't with her."
The creases in Lady Taeya's face deepen.
Rey tries to slip her arm out from Jae's and it tightens, pinning her to him.
"Don't," Jae says, half warning half command. He doesn't even look at her.
Rey's stomach bottoms out. She's being played. Instead of reaching for the light saber she doesn't have, she lifts her chin and tries to channel Virya's cool outrage. "What is this?" she demands.
"Sit down, Virya," one of the Drakun girls, she can't tell which, leans her chin onto her elbows and purrs. "Then we'll explain everything, though you might wish we hadn't."
"Gladly. If Jae would return my arm."
She shoots a slicing look his way but Jae continues to ignore her, waiting for his grandmother's cue. After a pause, Lady Taeya nods. Jae releases her. Blood floods stinging into Rey's elbow, which had started to go numb. Beneath hat gentlemanly demeanor, Jae had a startling strength. Rey makes a mental note to remember that as he takes the empty seat beside his grandmother.
In her periphery, Rey sees movement on the balcony. A smudge of darker shadow coming for the door. Very faintly, she shakes her head, asking for more time. Even if this is a trap for Virya, Rey might still be able to play it out and extract a confession from whoever murdered the Vorians. Then they'd have what they needed to start making arrests. Warily, she takes the seat nearest to her and prays Ben will understand. The game has changed, but it isn't over yet.
Everyone is still staring at her. But not in the way she'd been ready for — there's no surprise in their faces. No affronted outrage. This is a room of people who had been expecting her. Not only expecting, anticipating. Capturing Virya Vorian, Rey realizes, had always been the evening's main event.
They're trying to finish what they started . They're trying to kill the last Vorian. If Virya were here, she'd be furious. And she'd use that fury to cover any fear.
Rey sits back and lets the disdain show openly on her face. "Well? Wasn't someone going to tell me what everyone's playing at?"
The big, loud Lannlas man who had approached her first, calling her Lady Death, throws his head back and laughs. "What we're playing at, she says. That's rich."
"Uncle Lynus," Mikael warns, his mouth hidden behind steepled fingers. "Don't speak out of turn."
Lynus gestures exasperatedly at Rey. "Oh, what of it? We have her now. What's the point?"
"Have me?" Rey sneers, hoping to goad the tactless brute into giving away what she needs. "Like you had me three months ago? When you thought I'd been murdered with my father and the rest of my family? Because if that's how you mean, I'll reserve my concern."
Lynus grins, an eager baring of teeth.
"A secret assassination, then?" Rey prods. "Is that what this is? Just like one of you did to my father?"
Lynus puts an elbow on the table. "I don't know much about secrecy, m'Lady. When a Lannlas kills, we do it in the open. As for what happened to Doran Vorian, don't here." He jerks a knuckly thumb at the hearth. "Look over there."
Rey follows Lynus' thumb to the shadowy hearth. As she looks, the shadows around it shape. Not shadows, she realizes. Figures. Two people wearing hooded cloaks. As she sees them, the taller one steps into the light. The hood drops, revealing a face that cannot be there, because it being there is impossible.
"Hello," Doran Vorian smiles. "Daughter."
#
Rey's mind freezes and races all once. It's a trick. A trap. Doran Vorian is dead. Isn't he? But then who is the man before her? And if it truly is Doran, she thinks with a flash of panic, won't he know in an instant that Rey is not his real daughter?
"It can't be," Rey chokes. "You're dead."
Doran's mouth twitches. Across the table, Rey hears the Lannlas chuckle. The Drakun twins whisper delightedly to each other. It strikes her then that no one else is surprised. It's definitely a trap. But one they're all in on.
"If I'm dead, my dear," Doran says, "then you are insane. So is everyone in this room for coming to the call of a ghost. Or alternatively, I am very much alive and you are simply in over your head. Which do you think is more likely?"
Rey stares speechlessly. The man crosses the hearth and takes the last empty seat, right at the head of the table.
Then he just watches her. And Rey, not knowing what else to do, watches him back. Doran has strong features, a square jawline, and an old scar on his temple. Thick blond hair, which he'd gifted to his daughter, and the bluest eyes she's ever seen. So intensely blue they blinded Rey to whatever thoughts lay underneath.
"Well?" He says finally. "Come and give me a kiss."
Rey's skin crawls but she can't see how to refuse. Stiffly, she stands, chair legs scraping, and makes her way toward him, aware that the entire room is watching her.
It doesn't make sense, she thinks numbly. It doesn't. Why would Doran fake his death to his own daughter?
Doran turns his cheek expectantly. And Rey, certain he will feel the pounding of her heart through her skin, leans down and touches her lips to the pale wedge of scar tissue on his brow. As she pulls back, Doran catches her chin in his hand.
Rey freezes.
His fingers dig along her jawbone. Those bright blue eyes seem to go straight through her.
He knows , she thinks. Of course he does. His own daughter.
"You've gone much farther in your betrayal I ever thought you were capable of," Doran says mildly. "But I suppose you had the best of help. That fool, Leia. Her idiot Senators."
"Father," Rey forces the word, difficult with his thumb and fingers digging into the hollows of her cheeks. "I don't know what you're talking about. I've never met - "
"And of course there is your real mentor," Doran smiles. "I expect all the real work was done there."
Rey tries to grasp enough straws to keep her act intact. If she doesn't think fast enough, Doran is sure to notice that she's a fake.
He squeezes her chin hard in his hand, then suddenly releases her.
Rey takes a faltering step back, raising fingers to her jaw. "I don't understand. Who are you talking about?"
Doran snaps his fingers, and the smaller shadow steps out from the hearth and into the light. The hood drops. Rey's racing thoughts turn to dust. Her heart collapses.
No.
"He's talking about me, of course," Virya says, laying a hand on Doran's shoulder. "Oh don't give me that look, Rey. I did warn you, remember? In the Inner Circle, you're more likely to be stabbed in the back by an ally than in the chest by your foe."