Chapter Eighteen The Apology #2
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My mentor—she was good, though she wasn’t nice. Not at all. She was crass, and stubborn, and drank too much. She’d never lift a finger for anyone if it wasn’t in her best interest.”
“Then how was she good?”
He sat up in his chair and leaned against the armrest, crooking his finger for me to come closer.
I decided to play along and leaned toward him.
We were just far enough apart so we weren’t touching, but not by much.
Close enough to whisper a secret, but far enough that I could deny that I liked this closeness.
Though I did like it. I liked that I could count his silver eyelashes, and I liked that I could see a hairline scar across the bridge of his nose.
I liked that, this close, in the low light of the flight deck, he could see no one else—as if I was his galaxy.
He put a finger to his lips, and I noticed the beauty mark below them looked indigo in this light.
There was a ring on his first finger, made of dark metal and engraved in a language I didn’t understand, and his nails were tinted the same bruised color as his beauty mark.
“There was once—allegedly—a bas-relief in Palpatine’s office when he was in power,” he began, his voice barely a rumbling whisper.
I felt like he was telling me a forbidden secret, not the history of a piece of art in an office.
“It depicted an age-old battle between the Jedi and the Sith. During the end of the Galactic Republic, Jedi would pass it and not think anything of it. They didn’t consider it at all, really.
But rumor is, the bas-relief was taken from a frieze found in a Sith temple on Malachor.
My mentor was obsessed with the relic—didn’t care where it came from.
She wanted nothing more than to return it to its place of origin. ”
I was confused. “Sith—aren’t they a faction of people who worshiped the dark side?”
“The way my mentor explained, Sith were the antithesis to the Jedi, but we don’t know very much about them—who they were, what they wanted.”
“But they were bad people.”
He shrugged. “My mentor always said that history wasn’t a prize to be hung on a wall—for anyone. Good or evil. It wasn’t ours to take, but ours to learn from.”
“But why not destroy it if it was evil?”
“Because that’s how you forget, and if you forget, you repeat the same mistakes over and over. And then, before you know it, the next Palpatine comes along to take power.”
“That’ll never happen,” I said. “We learned.”
He shrugged. “So you see, I can’t say my mentor was nice, but I do believe that she thought she was good. And so do I.” He blew out a breath. “It’s exhausting trying to live up to her expectations, though.”
“I feel the same way,” I mumbled.
He grinned at that, propping his head on his hand, elbow on the console between us. “Look at us, Starlight. We’ve got similar scars, after all.”
“Why do you call me that?”
He blinked in surprise. “Why?”
“It doesn’t really suit me.” I swung my chair toward him.
I knew what I looked like—the same reflection stared back at me every morning.
Auburn hair more mess than curls, freckles with no discernible pattern, a gap between my front teeth, and thighs that made it hard to fit into most trousers comfortably.
I wasn’t short and cute or tall and elegant. I was just…
His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, I’m not blind or fishing for compliments. I know exactly who I am. I’m not pretty like Kotti or elegant like Daaric or striking like you.”
At that, he rotated his chair to face me, too. “Striking?”
I scoffed, too tired to be coy or embarrassed. “Of course you are.”
He scrunched his nose. “It’s my hair, isn’t it?”
“And your eyes. I’ve never seen any like yours before.”
“Most people haven’t,” he agreed, before I uncurled my legs and leaned forward, squinting at him. He met my gaze, searching my eyes as I searched his. “And most people can’t look at them for long without feeling uneasy.”
That surprised me. “Why would people feel uneasy?”
He shrugged. “They just do. I think it’s the way my eyes look. I can sort of…hypnotize people.”
“Have you hypnotized me?”
“No,” he replied quickly, and then winced. “I mean, I haven’t on purpose. Most of the time I can control it, but sometimes it’s instinctual. When I’m threatened or nervous or…” He pursed his lips. “It’s hard to explain. But I don’t think I can hypnotize you.”
I scooted a little closer to him. “Show me?”
He blinked. “What?”
“I’d like to see,” I went on.
“You trust me to hypnotize you?”
“You just said you don’t think you can.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.” Then he took a deep breath, as if to steady himself, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the immovable white specks widened, like pupils—larger and larger, like distant stars coming closer in the viewport.
I did feel a tug of something—a strange fuzziness in my head—but it evaporated just as soon as I started to spin away.
“Oh,” I whispered.
He quickly put his hands atop mine, blinking, releasing me from his gaze. “Are you all right?” He sounded concerned. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you—”
“That was beautiful.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. Then he looked at me again. “What?” Then, a little calmer: “You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “I felt you beginning to hypnotize me, but you were right. I don’t think you can.
” I searched his eyes still, unable to look away.
“They’re so lovely. What does the galaxy look like to you?
” I mused aloud, and then realized how rude that must have sounded and added, “I mean—there are plenty of different fields of vision and color ranges that different species—”
“I understand what you meant,” he interrupted, not unkindly, and wrapped a piece of my wavy auburn hair around his finger. It had come loose from its braid sometime in the night, and I hadn’t noticed. “What color does this look like?”
“Muddy. Not copper, not brown. Kind of…not sure what it wants to be.”
“Hmm.” He played with my hair, unraveling it.
“It isn’t muddy to me. It’s bright. It shines copper.
” Then he let go of the curl, hand lingering as he studied my face, my mouth.
He whispered, “The color suits you.” Then he pushed the lock behind my ear.
“I call you Starlight because the first time I saw you laugh, after we almost died on Coruscant, you were impossible to tear my eyes away from. Like a flare of light in a sea of darkness. And it was beautiful.”
We were so close that I couldn’t ignore how intimate this was even if I wanted to.
My skin felt electrified, waiting for the moment he would touch me again and spark me to life.
Joy trembled in my chest, feeling like firecrackers.
Then he took gentle hold of my chin. The tips of his fingers were rough with callouses.
What kind of life did he lead to earn hands like that?
Is he going to kiss me? I wondered, my heart beating frantic in my chest, but he seemed patient, measured.
So much so that all I could think of was pushing him back into his chair and straddling his thighs so he couldn’t escape, then kissing him right here with the glow of Naboo in that lovely silver hair—
Without thinking, I reached up and ran my fingers through the front of his hair, pushing it out of his face. It was soft—like how I imagined starlight would feel.
His eyes widened in surprise, and I realized a little too late what, exactly, I’d done.
I quickly retracted my hand and schooled my face. “You should probably go. Veebee is bringing me caf in half an hour—”
“Veebee has brought you caf already, actually,” came the voice of VB-35 from the doorway.
Mortified, I whirled around in my chair to find the droid standing there with a cup of steaming-hot caf. Her glowing eyes settled on me, and even though she didn’t have an expression, I knew exactly what it would have been: amusement.
“I hope I haven’t interrupted anything,” Veebee went on casually, letting herself onto the flight deck and bending between us to set down the cup of caf on the control panel. “If I knew you had company, I would have brought two.”
I was never going to live this down, I could already tell. I blushed and quickly turned to check the navigational console, even though nothing had changed since I last looked. “No, no. He was just leaving.”
“I was,” he agreed, and pushed himself to his feet. “Good night, Starlight.”
I waved my hand in reply and didn’t turn back around until I heard him leave.
With VB-35, on the other hand, I wasn’t so lucky. If the droid had eyebrows, she would have raised one of them to mock me, but her smugly curious voice had to suffice. “You two looked awfully cozy….”
“Please don’t,” I groaned, and buried my head in my hands. My cheeks were somehow even hotter than they had been a second ago. I wasn’t sure what was more embarrassing, the fact that Veebee had caught us so close or that I had wanted to get closer.
And that was an awful thing to want in my profession.
Because if I knew anything about star tours, it was that in a job as transient as this, guests came and went like comets. Our tour was just a blip, a passing moment in their lives. We weren’t anchors. I wasn’t an anchor.
Everyone I loved left—even my dad would, eventually. Why would a stowaway who planned to get off when we reached Tatooine be any different?