Star Wars: The Last Jedi by Michael Kogge

Author:Michael Kogge [Kogge, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2018-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

“CHEWIE, get her ready for launch. We’re leaving.”

Rey spoke into her comlink as she backtracked along the same path that had taken her to Luke the day of her arrival. Now it would return her to the Millennium Falcon and the Resistance. She was done trying to persuade the stubborn Skywalker. He was a lost cause.

A dark presence pinched the back of her mind, as it had twice before. She gritted her teeth. “I’d rather not do this now.”

“Me too,” Kylo Ren said.

She spun around at the sound of his voice. “Why did you hate your father?”

“Because he was a weak-minded fool,” Ren snarled. She saw him standing in his lair on a Star Destroyer, shirtless, his torso as pale as bleached bone.

Rey momentarily looked away in embarrassment, even though the vision came to her through the Force. “Give me an honest answer. You had a father who loved you.”

“I didn’t hate him.”

His lie incensed her. “Then why did you kill him? I don’t understand.”

“No?” Ren said with a laugh. “Your own parents threw you away like garbage—”

“No, they didn’t,” Rey objected.

“Oh, they did, and you still can’t stop needing them. It’s your greatest weakness. You look for them everywhere. In Han Solo, and now in Skywalker.”

Rey wanted to protest, but she had nothing to say. For once, Kylo Ren told the truth. After meeting Finn, Han Solo, and Chewbacca, she hadn’t returned to Jakku to wait for her parents as she kept asserting she would. She’d stayed with Han because he’d taken her under his wing. Even after Kylo Ren had murdered him, she didn’t go back. She went to Ahch-To, leaving friends like Finn behind, to find someone else to mentor her.

She was selfish, she realized—for what she sought was more than a mentor.

She wanted a parent.

Ren’s lips curled into a smile. He turned the conversation back to Luke. “Did he tell you what happened that night?”

“Yes,” she said. But she doubted Luke had told her every detail—and she knew Ren could sense her doubt.

“No he didn’t,” Ren said.

A new vision came to Rey, showing Kylo Ren’s personal quarters in the Jedi temple. Ren slept on a pallet, visible in a crackling green glow.

Luke Skywalker, robed in black, hovered over him, holding his lightsaber. The Jedi Master’s face was not the aged and tired one Rey knew, but a twisted and tormented face. The face of a monster.

Luke lowered his saber to kill the youth.

But Ren was already awake and called his own lightsaber to him. His blue blade parried Luke’s green one. The swords sizzled. Energy sparked. Ren stretched out with his other hand to the ceiling. It quaked, fractured, and then caved in on Luke Skywalker.

“Liar,” Rey said, cutting off the vision. Luke may not have told her all the truth, but he could never be a murderer.

Could he?

“Let the past die,” Kylo Ren said. “Kill it if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.”

His image and presence disappeared from her mind.

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