Queen_Caeda
Synopsis
The first kiss led to another, and another-until it became something more.
Every lesson Jessica had ever learned at the Jedi Temple-from Master Lu's lectures on restraint to the ancient holocrons warning against the lure of the dark side-was silenced by the press of Juelo's lips. Attachment was the path to the shadows. Love, especially, was the greatest vulnerability. Yet in his arms, beneath the smog-streaked sky of Xalos Prime, she didn't feel weak. She felt alive.
She was a Padawan on an undercover mission with her Master to protect and guide refugees. Juelo, the blue-skinned Twi'lek she had met, was charming-and secretly an agent of the Dark Council, sent to scout the planet for the Empire.
The mission ended. Juelo vanished. Jessica returned to Coruscant, encased in the stone and light of the Jedi Temple, trying desperately to resume her routine. The weight of her betrayal-of the Code she had broken-was a heavy cloak around her shoulders.
Now, lying on a thin mat in her dorm, Jessica pressed a trembling hand to her lower abdomen. The Force, the same boundless energy that connected all life, felt heavy and strange within her. She had made a terrible mistake-a choice that could destroy her life in the Order if it ever came to light.
She had chosen forbidden intimacy, mere hours before she departed her mission.
And no amount of meditation-or the fleeting warmth that followed that night-could erase the guilt, the dread, or the strange sickness that now haunted her.