Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens Lost Stars by Claudia Gray, Phil Noto Page A

but then he couldn’t. “You don’t look fine.”
    She made a strange sound—half laugh, half sob. “It’s stupid.”
    “What?”
    “…I got a holo from my parents. The muunyak died.”
    “The one you used to ride up to the Fortress sometimes, when we were little?” Thane had not spoken of the Fortress in years.
    Ciena nodded. “Yeah. Him. He was pretty old, and I knew when I came here I’d probablynever see him again—but still.” She rolled her eyes, mocking her own emotions.
“Stupid to get upset, huh?”
    “It’s not stupid. That muunyak was
great
.” Thane had ridden him a couple of times, too. He remembered being a child and sitting on the beast’s broad furry back,
his arms looped around Ciena’s waist, both of them laughing in mingled delight and terror as the muunyak nimbly walked anarrow ridge alongside the mountain.
    She smiled. It had been a long time since Thane had seen her smile at him and mean it. “He was, wasn’t he?”
    “Yeah.”
    Their eyes met, and for a moment, it was as if the past couple of years had fallen away—
    But then Ciena’s expression dimmed. Her posture became more rigid, and she said, formally, “Thank you for your concern. If you’ll excuse me,I need to change for my Amphibious
Battle Tactics study group.”
    Thane held his hands in front of him, a push-back motion. “You’re excused.”
    She always did that—went cold and shut him out again. He told himself he was used to it, that he’d long since stopped caring. Still, the entire way to the
dispensary, Thane couldn’t stop thinking of the Fortress they’d created together and howhe used to sit up there, waiting for his one true friend.
    He always did that—acted nice just long enough for Ciena to forget how he’d lashed out at her. She’d start confiding in him the way she used to, then catch
herself as she remembered how thoroughly Thane had shut her out.
    As she sat in her study group, watching holos of real amphibious invasions from history, Ciena brooded on thatodd, fractured encounter with Thane. She wished she hadn’t gone so
cold—but it seemed like every time she tried to be herself with him, he turned away.
    What had she done that was so wrong? He was the one who had gone crazy after the stupid cannon project two and a half years before, assuming there was some mass conspiracy at work. He was the
one who would have dragged them into an administrativehearing based on no evidence, which would have resulted in their immediate expulsion. And sometimes he seemed so offended when she beat him on
tests or challenges that Ciena felt like he couldn’t believe that someone so inferior had bested him. Did he still consider her nothing but a little valley waif?
    Maybe he’d always seen their friendship as an act of charity. All those practice flights,all those study sessions with CZ-1—maybe they hadn’t shared those experiences as
friends; maybe instead they’d been gifts from the rich boy to the little girl he expected to worship him in return.
    That was too much, and Ciena knew it. She and Thane had truly been friends and on some level still were—but it was a level she could no longer reach.
    Her study group leader kept talking. Cienasat there, hearing but not listening, remembering the way she and Thane had sat in the Fortress for hours, sharing their secrets and dreaming about the
stars.
    A few weeks before graduation, the commandant announced that a handful of top cadets would attend a reception and ball at the Imperial Palace. The thought of it took
Ciena’s breath away. Of course there was little chance the Emperorhimself would preside over the gathering. Yet the Imperial Palace was one of the grandest and most elegant structures on the
entire planet; apparently it had once been a temple of some kind. Hundreds of senior military officers would be there, not to mention many members of the Imperial Senate. Any cadets invited to a
gathering such as that were being noted for