Fame and Fortune

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Hapes, Ta'a Chume'Dan

Royal Palace

Luke hugged his sister energetically in the Palace hallway, noting how thin she'd become since giving birth the year prior. Too thin, in his opinion and Luke felt a pang of worry since the last time she'd lost this much weight was after Yavin while she was recovering, emotionally and physically, from the Death Star and losing Alderaan. "Are you eating enough?"

The Princess-turned-Queen gave her brother a put-upon expression, although Luke noted the dark circles under her eyes. "I'm fine, Luke. I've just lost my pregnancy weight." She turned toward Mara. "Luke told me over the holocom about your engagement. Congratulations are in order. You're going to become a member of my family pretty soon, I hope?"

"We haven't set an actual date or location for the wedding, but you'll be the first to know," Mara replied. She gave a quick glance over to Luke, then asked, "Are you looking forward to the concert tomorrow evening?"

Leia bit her lip in consideration of the question. "I suppose so. I really don't pay much attention to singers or actors, both because of time constraints and lack of interest in the latest fad. The last time I got excited about a concert I was fourteen. His name was Teech Morduc. Do you remember him? Curly blond hair, dimples. I remember I had the biggest crush on him. When my father thought we were asleep, Winter and I would stay up late at night reading celebrity holo-zines just to get the latest gossip about Teech."

"I think I do remember him," Mara said thoughtfully. "Whatever happened to him?"

"He was on Alderaan," Leia replied softly, and Mara said nothing more, knowing that answered her question.

It was time to distract Leia, so Luke said, "Do you know which hotel Evin Daysun and his band are staying? He's got a pretty big contingent, a band, a small orchestra, six back-up singers..."

"You seem to know quite a bit about his operation," Leia said, amused. "Are you a fan?"

"Luke's his biggest fan in the galaxy," Mara said, smirking.

Mara had argued with Luke that he needed to tell Leia the truth, before the concert but the Jedi Master had kept telling her the Force would find a way to make the reveal, and besides, he'd made that stupid promise to Han. When Mara then pointed out Luke had already broken that promise by telling her the secret, Luke had replied, with a straight face, that was only because she was sleeping with him and that fact overrode anything he said to Han. Mara suspected the real truth was that Luke just couldn't figure out a good way to tell Leia and he didn't know how she would react. Males could be such cowards...even Jedi males, Mara had thought in annoyance.

Mara sometimes wanted to slug Luke, but this 'reveal' might be just as good, so she said, "In fact, I don't know if Luke has told you this, but Evin is building him his Jedi Academy on his private estate, and we've moved into Evin Daysun's house. Probably forever, from what I can surmise."

Luke glared at Mara, and Leia looked truly astonished. "Luke? Is that true?"

"I... um, Evin offered, and since he's nice - "

"Yes," Mara interrupted gleefully. "That's what Luke keeps telling me. Evin is doing all this for him because he's nice. Mind you, we've been around the guy for two entire days, but we're already indebted to him and we will be changing our forwarding address to his house." Mara grinned at Luke, who was actually flushed. "I'm starting to get worried about losing my fiance's heart to Evin."

"Mara!" Luke said, eyes wide. "Why are you saying that?"

"Because you aren't doing the right thing," Mara snapped back, suddenly angry. "And you know what I'm talking about, too."