In the previous chapter: Rey watches Snoke's memory and learns he has control over a powerful Force artifact called the Victive. She's sidetracked by Ren, who senses her dread and helpfully distracts her.

Chapter 16

"How did you learn all of this?" Leia asked after I gave her a heavily edited summary of what I knew about the Victive.

I hesitated for a fraction of a second. I'd lied to Leia yesterday about the memory disk's existence, and I couldn't come clean and hand it over now because I needed to show it to Ren as proof of Snoke's plan. Which left me with only one option: "I overheard Ren talking about it to someone through the Force bond. He didn't know I was listening."

Dear stars, I was such a liar.

"Snoke plans to use Ren to power the Victive," I continued before Leia could ask more questions about the source of my information. "But the Victive would hurt him. It would kill him. I'm going to convince him to leave the Order before that happens. I'll need to be off-base for a few days. Ren would never come back to Emmett II with me. And honestly, I'm not sure anyone but us would even want him here."

Leia's eyes narrowed in thought. "Is there a chance he'll abandon Snoke for good?"

I nodded slowly, hoping I was giving her an honest answer this time. "Yes."

A radiant smile broke through the stormclouds on Leia's face. Her happiness only made me feel uglier for concealing the complete truth. The lies coating my tongue were so many layers deep it was hard not to gag on them.

My heart pounded as Leia searched my face thoughtfully. He might think his only way out is to destroy himself, but I'll be damned if I make it easy for him. And if I sleep with him before… or after… or both… I just hope you understand if you ever find out.

Only then did I remember that Leia was Force-sensitive, and I snatched all of my errant thoughts and bundled them down into the depths of my head. Her smile faded, leaving me pinned with a shrewd look. I was pretty sure nothing got by this woman, whether she used the Force or not.

"After all that happened on Skunkt, are you sure it's safe?" she finally asked.

"He won't hurt me," I replied softly. "And I can handle him if he tries."

"Alright. I'll put together a reconnaissance mission for you as cover. Make sure you inform Luke of your plans before you leave." She snorted at the blanched look on my face. "Oh no. I'm not letting you off that easily. That's a conversation I'm staying far away from."

–

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Luke had just finished a lesson with the group of younger Force sensitives we'd recruited into the Resistance over the past year.

Ammen – the young Gryl who'd had an Awakening and saved her mother's life – chirped a lively greeting at me as she bounded out the door, followed by the rest of the younglings. Luke and I were left alone in the classroom.

"Rey," he greeted me with a swift, appraising look. "Were you the one creating such a disturbance in the Force earlier today?"

It took every ounce of self-control to not blush furiously. Had I really thought fooling around with Ren in such a powerful Force vision smack dab in the middle of the Resistance base would go unnoticed?

"I was talking to Kylo Ren," I replied calmly while my brain raced to fill the gaps. "But then something odd happened with our bond. It must have affected the Force web more than I thought. I overheard him talking about an object called the Victive."

Luke stiffened when I mentioned the Sith artifact by name. He turned away and began straightening the training room. I silently helped him collect wooden training staves and stack meditation pillows.

"What did you overhear?" he asked. I gave him the same explanation I'd given Leia. A pillow slipped from his metallic grasp when I detailed my plan to stay off-base for a few days.

"The Victive is unstable in the hands of a creature like Snoke," Luke warned. "It could very well prove fatal to Ren or anyone else who uses it. Leia is no-doubt eager for you to save her son from his poorly-made decisions, but you must be cautious. His mistakes have harmed the entire galaxy. I fear yours could do the same." His eyes bore into mine before he wearily bent over to retrieve the pillow. "Is there anything else you needed?"

I worried my lower lip, remembering Luke's blunt question to me on Skunkt – "Do you still want to become a Jedi?" – and my pitiful answer which hadn't exactly been "no" but definitely wasn't "yes."

"I'm afraid I'm going to make a poor Jedi. I don't feel ready."

"You needn't feel ready, only willing to try your best," Luke said in a serious tone, though his eyes had softened. "Following the path of the Jedi is a lifelong pursuit. There are always more answers to find when you're prepared to seek them out. The questions you ask simply… change. As a scavenger, you surely returned to a ship you'd previously searched and used new knowledge to discover more parts to salvage. Ones you'd missed or overlooked the first time."

Luke's analogy made me uncomfortable. I'd previously compared my mission with Kylo to that of scavenging for the lost, hidden pieces of Ben Solo. It was disconcerting to also liken it to seeking personal, introspective answers to the myriad of Jedi mysteries rooted in the ways of the Force. What if I didn't like the answers I found?

"I wish you'd lived in a different era," Luke sighed, "when Jedi had the luxury of being philosophers and scholars. They were peacekeepers, not political pawns. Perhaps your path through the Force would have been clearer. Perhaps Ben…

"Ben wanted to discontinue his Jedi training. I wouldn't let him," he confessed after a troubled pause. "Han and my sister already feared the dark side's influence over him. Without the guidance of the Jedi code, what would stop him from turning into our father? I realized too late this wasn't the right question to ask. I pushed too hard and gave Snoke the opportunity he needed. By retreating to Ahch-To, I sought to understand my anger and fear in the wake of Ben's betrayal. I needed time to heal and discover the questions I should've been asking all along."

"Did you find them? These questions?"

Luke straightened to his full height, his visage solemn but stalwart. "No. You showed up, holding a legacy I couldn't run away from any more than Ben could."

–

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–

Finally, finally, after hours of waiting that dragged by slower than all my years spent on Jakku, it was time to leave Emmett II.

I briefly dipped into Ren's head. 'I'm on my way.'

A rush of energy glow flowed across our bond. 'I'll see you there.'

I plugged the coordinates for Gryl into my cruiser and raced through hyperspace at full throttle.

The journey was brief, but long enough for a crawling bout of anxiety to undermine my initial heady rush of excitement. I absently rubbed my arm, sore from where I'd talked a med droid into discreetly administering a contraceptive implant. After my passionate encounter with Ren this morning, I wasn't even sure I was a virgin anymore. Was I ready to take an already complicated relationship with Ren and throw sex into the mix? I resolved to show him Snoke's memory first, before anything physical ignited between us.

I'd left Emmett II at nightfall, but on Gryl it was just past dawn. I piloted my courier ship to the dark surface, touching down in my usual spot at the base of the village.

Ren was already there, his figure a dark smudge amongst velvet desert shadows. My landing kicked up violent clouds of dust and grit that whipped through his cloak and lifted his dark hair away from his face.

A blush rose to my cheeks as I left my ship and approached Ren. He'd made my body sing through the Force just this morning, and now we were here on Gryl, utterly alone, with all the time in the world to be together.

I had the memory disk securely tucked in my vest pocket, but the importance of that mission dissolved under the heat in Ren's gaze and the answering warmth suffusing my entire body.

We didn't speak a word as Ren wrapped his arms around me and lifted me into the air, almost as effortlessly as he had in our vision, and brought his mouth hungrily to mine. Our lips crashed together with the same desperate, earth-shattering impact of two uncontrolled heavenly masses colliding with helpless finality.

I wound my arms around his neck, one hand tight against his shoulder, the other fisted in his sleek black hair. If his body had felt incredible through the Force, it was nothing – nothing – compared to the reality of being held tight against his strong, massive frame. My legs instinctively rose and hooked behind his back, rubbing my clit against the hard mound growing in his pants.

We kissed and tasted and all the while yearned for more. Through our bond, I sensed him marveling that I was actually here in his arms – that I was happily accepting the way he made my body hum in pleasure. Accepting him, just as he was in this moment. For someone like Kylo Ren, who had never loved himself, I wondered if my approval was more precious than all the Force energy in the galaxy.

My eyes drifted open as I broke away from his mouth, close enough to admire the beauty marks dusted across his handsome, aquiline features, as well as the primitive scar that sundered his cheek. His full lips were parted as he panted for air, breath quivering in his throat like the first time I'd thrown him out of my head on Starkiller.

I sunk into our bond and sent him a flash of an explicit fantasy that involved the hand restraints on that particular interrogation rack. His eyes went wide with lust and perhaps a hint of awe while his hand dropped to the front of his pants, clearly ready to take me here and now in the pale dawn.

I squeezed his shoulders harder than necessary, digging my nails through the fabric and pinching his skin. "Not here," I whispered. "The Gryls can see us."

"I don't care," he muttered back. "Let them watch."

I turned my head and swept power high above us. No one was lurking in the numerous open-air caverns that dotted the cliffs towering above us, which was strange for the boisterous, nosy Grylix.

As I hunted for the tribe, picking through the tunnels and interconnected dens and grottos, the first pangs of unease settled into my gut. I couldn't find anyone watching us… because I couldn't find anyone at all.

I gave Ren an apologetic glance as my legs unhooked from his waist and I softly dropped to the ground. Ren stared down at me from his looming height, frustration written across his princely brow.

"Something's wrong. The whole tribe should be up there," I said, still whispering despite the fact we appeared to be completely alone. "They might be in trouble."

"And you want to go check on them," he sighed.

I lifted my hand to his cheek, fingers tracing his jaw and the tip of his scar. "Just to make sure everything's alright. I didn't want to stay here anyway." I shared a memory from the first night we'd kissed, when Ren had suggested vanishing into a lavish, discreet inn on Skunkt, and how badly I'd wanted to say yes.

Ren's grip momentarily tightened around me. Then his arms reluctantly slid down my back and dropped to his side.

"Make it fast," he ordered. I teasingly pinched his earlobe in response as we ascended toward the village.

Inside, the tunnels no longer rang with the Gryl's usual chittering excitement. The only sound was the echo of our footsteps down winding stone corridors. It had clearly been the start of a normal day for the tribe. In every cavern we passed through, the materials and tools for sewing projects, stone carvings and jewelry crafting looked like they'd simply been set down for a moment's pause. We glanced inside a kitchen where half-eaten meals lay abandoned, as if the entire tribe had abruptly stood and walked away. An eerie stillness remained after the sudden absence of life, and I was unwillingly reminded of Roony.

"Let's look in the temple," Ren suggested.

My breathing hitched, recalling how we'd briefly stood in a Force-created mirror of the Ramarode earlier today, intoxicated from the feel of our bodies pressed together – moving together.

The shiver of pleasure vanished the instant we stepped inside the temple. As it so happened, the entire Grylix tribe was here, but my mind went numb from the bloodcurdling scene in front of us.

The Gryl's headless corpses littered the ground and choked the temple pool. The water had turned into a thick, frothy crimson carpet. A ghostly beam of morning light illuminated heads stacked several layers deep on the central rocky island. Their expressions were calmer in death than I'd ever seen them in life.

I dropped to my knees and vomited, my body and mind unable to process the sight of the grotesque massacre. There were no signs, either here or in the rest of the village, that there had been any sort of resistance or fighting. It was like the entire tribe had willingly walked to the temple for their beheading – just like in Snoke's memory, when the crowd of townspeople had lined up and complacently awaited death.

Ren pulled me to my feet and around a bend in the corridor to obscure the ghastly sight – the same corridor we'd cleared of rubble months ago at the very start of Potentium. I burst into tears, grief cascading down my cheeks. Ren wordlessly folded me into a hug which just made me cry harder.

The Gryl had barely taken sides in the galactic war – only grudgingly permitting Ammen to join the Resistance after she'd Awakened. Snoke had absolutely no reason to target their tribe, though he must know this was where Ren and I met for Potentium missions… which could only mean this vulgar display of power was meant as a warning to Ren. To both of us.

Ren's frustrated voice rumbled against me as he tried to come up with an explanation for what we'd seen. "They didn't struggle. It could be a weird ritual sacrifice. Something they've been planning for years."

"You know it's not," I croaked past the harsh burning in my throat. "It's a warning from Snoke."

Ren stiffened at my accusation and I stepped away from his embrace, wiping at my cheeks. The walls that had so willingly crumbled earlier sprang up once more, made whole from our wariness and doubts.

"It's not safe here," I said, delaying the inevitable argument. "We need to leave."

I took one last look into the Gryl's horrid tomb, silently promising to come back and give them a proper burial. We left the defaced temple and retraced our steps to the plains at the base of the cliff, where I recited a coordinate string from memory that Ren could plug into his ship's navicomputer.

"Meet me there," I told him, and only when I was alone in the haunting swirl hyperspace did I break down into tears again.

Snoke had punished us the instant we tried to turn our backs on the war. Did he suspect that Ren had given up trying to recruiting me into the Order? Did he despise competing with me for Ren's attention? Ren was clearly on dangerous ground with his abhorrent leader, and the Gryls had paid for it with their lives. How could I tell Ammen that her entire tribe had been wiped from the face of the planet? That it was partially my fault that they'd been innocent victims of Snoke's ire?

I scrubbed the tears from my face and focused on breathing evenly. I had to look forward and ensure the Gryl's sacrifice wasn't for naught. Ren didn't know about the Victive, judging by his reaction to the grisly scene in the temple. Otherwise he would have recognized it as Snoke's vicious design. That meant that Daamith was still chained to the Sith artifact, but Snoke might turn his ugly gaze on Ren any day now. I couldn't let Ren go back to the Order. All of our private moments shared through the Force bond, all of the work on Potentium – everything led up to this moment. I had to make this happen. Ren's life was at stake.

A soft chime filled the cabin as I exited hyperspace, followed a split second later by Ren's shuttle. A barren, desert planet filled my vision.

'Jakku?' he asked with genuine surprise. 'Why here?'

'We need a place to talk.'

More importantly, I needed a reminder. A glimmer of the sun-forged strength that had kept me alive for years, honed by the sharp edge of hunger and isolated independence. I needed to be rebranded by the fierce, unquenchable fire that had propelled me onward day after day, and forced me to embrace the dark irony of scavenging for life in a graveyard. I had to beat that raw determination deep into my bones until they would only bleed courage should they break.

I would need all of that and more if I was going to survive the earth shaking, heart wrenching, soul shattering conversation I was about to have with Kylo Ren.

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