[..]She put a finger to her lips, glanced down the side of the cliff. "Come," she whispered.
Han hurried over, nervous. Leia seemed so?at ease, rested. Not her usual self. Han wondered if it was just the darkness widening her pupils that made her eyes seem so large, so liquid. Leia took his hand. Her small fingers were cold, more heavily calloused than he remembered. She walked out to the edge of the parapet. "Come with me," she said more loudly. "I won't let you fall." She began singing lightly, swaying in dance, and it felt as if a warm woolen blanket fell over his mind, making his thoughts muzzy. She took a step out and stood in midair, and Han thought he should be surprised, yet somehow it seemed natural for Leia to be standing in the air. He wanted to follow, but somehow his throat tightened, his face felt hot, and his knees wobbled.
"Don't be afraid," Leia whispered. "The drop is not so far as it seems. I won't let you get hurt."
Han's knees seemed to strengthen, and the warm burning in his cheeks and ears lessened. He took a careful step.
A blurring figure dressed all in hides leaped from the dark doorway behind them. The steel of a vibro-blade hummed in the air, slashed down through Leia's face. She shrieked and dropped, clinging to Han's wrist, pulling him over the edge.
Suddenly Han recognized his danger. He jerked away reflexively as Leia fell shrieking to the rocks two hundred meters below.
The figure in black pushed Han to the ground, pulled a blaster and began firing at the cliff face. There were women crawling up the rock wall, clinging impossibly like spiders. All of them looked like Leia. Han gasped, watched them scurry backward, then leap away and drop safely to the ground. Other guards rushed out to the parapets and began firing. Within seconds the Nightsisters disappeared.[..]