“Absolutely not.” Breha snapped back into mother mode, the version of it closest to queen mode. “The danger we’re facing is too great.”
“Do you think not telling me anything is going to protect me?” Her parents might be courageous, but to Leia, they seemed shortsighted, too. “If the two of you are found out, do you really think the Empire won’t come for me?”
Her mother made a low, anguished sound in the back of her throat, not quite a moan. Bail gripped his wife’s hand more tightly for a few long, silent moments before he said, “They would. We know that. We carry the burden of that knowledge every day. And if they do come for you, you have to be completely innocent. Do you understand, Leia? If they question you—if they torture you—” His voice cracked, and he couldn’t go on.
Breha picked up where he left off. “If you truly know nothing, eventually they’ll realize that. There’s a chance—a good chance, I think—that they’d let you go. Probably they’d feel the need to leave someone from the royal house of Alderaan alive, and if you’re blameless, they could install you as queen to try to make it seem like a normal transfer of power. It’s the only shield we have for you, Leia. Don’t ask us to destroy it. Otherwise we couldn’t endure another day of this fight, and we must endure it. The fate of the entire galaxy is at stake. I don’t think we could risk you for anything less.” Tears welled in her mother’s dark eyes, and Leia felt powerless to comfort her. Instead she watched as Bail brought Breha into his embrace and brushed his lips against her black hair.
“I thought—” The words trembled more than Leia had thought they would. “I thought you two had forgotten about me. I thought you were ignoring me for no reason.”
Her parents instantly turned back to her, eyes wide with dismay. Bail shook his head as he said, “Sweetheart, no. We would never do that. Never.”
Breha pulled Leia into the embrace, turning it into a family hug. “Nothing less important than this work could ever take us from you,” she whispered as she stroked Leia’s braided hair. “Not even this changes how much we love you. It’s your future we fight for. Do you understand?”
Leia couldn’t answer out loud. She just nodded, burrowing deep into her parents’ arms, wishing they never had to be farther apart than this.
By the time she reached her bedroom, it was very nearly dawn. Her window faced away from the sunrise, so the only proof she saw was the graying of the night sky. Dully she wondered whether the household staff would remember to override 2V’s standing orders to wake Leia up early in the morning. Probably not.
If she fell asleep this instant, she might get two hours of rest. That was laughable. Leia felt as if she would never be able to sleep again. Her mind raced wildly in a dozen directions at once, full of new knowledge and countless new questions her parents would refuse to answer.
However, she had realized something even the formidable Bail and Breha Organa didn’t know: They were fooling themselves about shielding her.
If her parents were revealed to be in rebellion against Emperor Palpatine, the entire House of Organa would be destroyed. Leia would die alongside her parents. Maybe the stormtroopers would even burn the palace to the ground. No mercy would be shown, and no innocence could protect her from the fate that would follow.
Really, her parents were too intelligent to believe otherwise. Only the desperation of their love had convinced them that part of their plan had any chance of success. Leia knew better. She hadn’t had enough time to deceive herself.
The danger terrified her, but it excited her, too. Instead of grappling with mystery and uncertainty, she saw a fight on the horizon, one with a clear enemy. Leia was sick of living in confusion or fear. She wanted to take action.
But how could she do that? Bail and Breha wouldn’t easily surrender their illusion of her safety. They would never willingly bring her into the fold of whatever organization this was they were forging. (She still didn’t understand exactly what that was, which was maddening, but her parents hadn’t betrayed one whisper of information beyond what Leia had already discovered for herself.) More than that, her mother and father were deceiving themselves about her safety because it was the only way for them to go on. She didn’t want to hurt them or make them more frightened than they already were. What if they pulled out of the fight entirely just to keep her from it?
But if the battle ahead was one for her future, then it was Leia’s battle too—whether her parents knew it or not.
I could be a courier, maybe. If I’m offworld where nobody knows I’m a princess, nobody pays any attention to me because they think I’m too young to be doing anything important. That means I could deliver critical secret messages without anybody noticing—
“Watch it!” Kier called, just as Leia slipped on her foothold. She was able to compensate in time, but hearing the rocks rattle down the mountainside beneath her was sobering. Newly alert, she took stock of her position on the ridge. Her entire pathfinding class was working on rock-climbing skills today, on the fog-shrouded planet Eriadu. Their trail led them along the outskirts of a richly forested gorge, one shadowed in moss and mists; even though Eriadu City could be seen in the far distance, they were beyond the town noise. She could hear nothing but the scrabbling of her classmates on the mountain trail, and the occasional rustling of tree branches beneath when one of the world’s large flying reptiles swooped through them, visible only as shadow.
A couple of meters away, Amilyn Holdo dangled from a climbing rope. She swung sideways toward Leia, purple hair peeking out from under her climbing helmet. “I understand the urge to explore extreme terror,” she said in her odd monotone, “but maybe this isn’t the time.”
“I got distracted.” That was as much of the truth as Leia could share. Amilyn smiled airily and swung back to her original place.
“Pull it together over there,” shouted Chief Pangie, who was taking up the rear. “We need to get back from this trip with the same number of princesses we started with!”
Leia called out, “Sorry! It won’t happen again.”
Under his breath, Kier said something she probably wasn’t meant to hear: “Yeah, it will.”
She turned toward him. “Excuse me?”
His face remained impassive, his dark eyes more curious than defensive. “It’s true. Your head’s been somewhere else all day. I don’t know what’s more important to you than not falling down this mountain, but whatever it is—”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Leia insisted. “And I don’t see how it’s any of your business how I climb.”