Chapter One

One

Tenel Ka sensed the hole in the Force the instant she entered the bedchamber. It was lurking in the black depths of the corner farthest from the entrance, a void so subtle she recognized it only by the surrounding stillness. She moved quickly through the doorway, her spine tingling with a ripple of danger sense so delicate it made her blood race.

Before her lady-in-waiting could enter the room behind her, she looked back over her shoulder and called, “That will be all, Lady Aros. Ask DeDeToo to lock down the nursery.”

“Lock it down, Majesty?” Aros stopped at the threshold, a slender silhouette still holding the evening gown Tenel Ka had just removed. “Is there something I need to—”

“Just a precaution,” Tenel Ka interrupted. Her robe was still hanging inside her refresher suite, so she was standing in her underclothes. “I know our embassy should be secure, but this is Coruscant.”

“Of course . . .” Aros dipped her chin. “The terrorists. This rach warren of a planet is absolutely teeming with them.”

“Let’s not be too disparaging, shall we?” Tenel Ka chided. She casually reached down and unfastened the thigh holster where she carried her lightsaber. “We did have to call on Colonel Solo to dispose of a few raches of our own recently.”

“I didn’t mean anything negative about the colonel,” Aros said, practically cooing the reference to Jacen. After his recent heroics defending Tenel Ka against the traitors trying to usurp her throne, he had become something of a sex symbol to half the women in the Hapes Co