Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 06 - Sentinel Read Free Page B

be able to trust each other,” she said.
    Jelph looked at her searchingly.
    She opened her eyes and glared at him. “I can feel it in your thoughts. You think I’m beautiful. You think you want me. You want to trust me. But you’re looking behind every word I say, trying to find me out, trying to trap me. Because of who I am.”
    Jelph looked down at the water. He hadn’t known why he had come all this way when so much was at risk. Not until now. “I think I know who you are, Ori.” He stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder. She shrank at his touch.
    “Jelph,” she said, grabbing at his hand but not pushing it away. “I can’t be the person I was back at the farm. If the only way to be with you is to be
weak
, I just can’t do it.”
    “You
can
be strong,” he said, reaching for her and pulling her off the ledge, down into the water before him. Her feet touching the bottom, she looked up at him. “You
are
strong,” he said. “You just don’t have to rule the galaxy.”
    She looked away from him, down at the pool. “It’s what we’re born to do, you know. To rule the galaxy.”
    “Then the Tribe is built on a trick,” he said. “A deception. Everyone is fighting over something that only one person can have. Just one. Which means that to be a Sith—is to be an
almost certain failure
. Almost everyone who follows your Code is doomed to fail, even before he starts.” Jelph chortled. “What kind of philosophy is that?” Nudging her chin upward with his hand, he looked into her eyes, brown again. “Don’t be tricked. You can’t lose if you don’t play.”
    He kissed her, uncaring what any Sith aerial sentry saw. Ori returned the embrace before pulling back. “Wait,” she said. “We’re
already
playing. It’s in motion. I can’t stop it.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Dark brow furrowed, Ori explained what her mother had suggested she do. “I’ve already sent word to the rival High Lords,” she said. “They’re going to meet me at your farm to see the spaceship.”
    Shocked back to reality, Jelph released her. “What … what did you say to them?” Stunned, he climbed out of the reservoir.
    Ori followed, appealing to him. Her mother had given her a phrase to use—code within the tiny High Lord community for a discovery of Kesh-shaking importance. “I didn’t tell them about the spaceship, but they know it’s important,” she said. “They’re supposed to meet me there tomorrow at sunset.”
    “Sunset!” Jelph sagged. It had taken him a full day and night just to get here on foot. “How were you going to get there?”
    “I was going to steal an uvak,” Ori said, standing atop the ledge and pointing up to a dark figure in the sky. “It’s why I came up here—I knew from the aqueduct, I could lure one of the aerial sentries down here.” She looked back at him petulantly. “Of course, that was when I still had a lightsaber.”
    “Lucky thing you made a friend,” he said, standing on the ledge beside her and looking up at the hovering sentry. He smiled. “You know, Ori, you’re the first Sith I’ve ever fought.”
    “You may need to try harder against this one,” she said, watching his lightsaber come to life. “We’re not all so easily charmed.”

Chapter Three
    It felt good to fly again. Ori looked down at the countryside slipping away beneath the uvak’s beating wings. Every so often, she turned back to see Jelph, clinging to her as she pulled the reins. He was still smiling. Flight was no mystery to him, she knew—but he’d lived for three years on the ground, looking up at flying Sith. This was a welcome change.
    She wondered what flying in his spaceship would be like. She knew now why he hadn’t simply flown away in it earlier—but now that they’d found each other, they needn’t be bound to Kesh any longer. They’d be an uncomfortable fit in the one-seat vehicle, and she knew he wanted to reinstall some kind of communications system before