She throws her arms around me and gives me such a hug. Not like Mama. I was my mama’s little girl, and she always held me gently, like I was precious and fragile. Lucie’s hug is fierce, as if I can’t be broken, and I hug her back just as tight.
A woman married is a woman with nothing of her own. Everything she’s ever worked for belongs to her husband.
I hope I have not broken the world.
Without breaking his gaze, I whisper, “Yes I love him. Enough to follow him anywhere.
He hardly paid attention, he kept seeing her face, the way her lips had parted with surprise, the way her body had canted towards him.
Something dark and inescapable moved within him, and he understood that he was viewing a monument. So much history and memory all in one place, and he was caught between reverence and rage. This was his inheritance; he knew it like he knew the feel of a lightsaber in his grip. But monuments preserved the past, and if he had learned anything recently it was that the past needed to die.
Okay, mostly rations. Her Resistance friends were always complaining about the food, saying it was tasteless and unsatisfying, but Rey had no idea what they were talking about. She’d never eaten so well in her life, or so often. She always kept a few nutrient packs stuffed under her cot, though. Just in case.
That’s our chance,” said Lando. He’d changed his Aki-Aki garb for bright clothing and a knee-length cape. Poe really liked his cape. He’d have to ask about it when all this was over.
He needed to stop showing up to a gunfight armed with nothing but charm and luck.
I can’t bear the thought of losing Hector. Sometime, when I wasn’t paying attention, I grew unbearably fond of him.
Kylo really hated that ship.
Lando went on: “First Order went after us – the leaders from the old wars. They took our kids.” His gaze grew distant. “My girl wasn’t even old enough to walk. Far as I know, she’s a stormtrooper now.
The beauty of the night sky offers strange comfort. It is unchanging. Immune to the wars of this world. Something to count on.
Turns out, the great wide world doesn’t look anything like a flat little map.
Everyone turns to me. You could hear an earthworm in the mud, for how silently they stare.
You won’t know how strong you are until you know how strong you have to be.
But the ambition that cut into his being was the thought of reigning side by side with her. They were connected. They had defeated Snoke. Together they would be invincible.
My smidge of hope is a fragile thing, a tiny waving flame in a vast landscape of reeking darkness. I will shelter it, treasure it, coax it, because the alternative is despair, and I don’t do despair.
Knowing something in her head was different from knowing it in her heart. Rey had understood on some level that she wasn’t alone anymore, but now she knew it, and it was so wonderful it hurt. Tears filled her eyes. Loneliness was a kind of agony. But belonging was another.
Today is the day of my wedding. It is also my sixteenth birthday.
At last the work of generations is complete. The great error is corrected. They day of victory is at hand. The day of revenge. The day of the Sith.