They told him space travel was impossible. They told him the greatest wizards who ever tried it died. He's going to do it anyway.
Altin Meade is a sorcerer running from a curse, the curse of Six: He's got too much magic to control, yet not enough to save himself. No Six in his planet's history has lived beyond the age of twenty-five. Altin is twenty-two. Determined to escape that fate, Altin seeks to leave his home world and remake his destiny amongst the stars. But first he has to invent a way to get there—a process that might bring about the very doom he's trying to avoid.
Far across the galaxy, there is nothing Ensign Orli Pewter hates more than life amongst the stars. Brought aboard as a child, she has spent the last ten years on the spaceship Aspect, a life she never asked for, a life of misery. Bright, strong and beautiful, Orli is now an officer in the fleet from Earth, serving a role and a mission she did not choose. As the lumbering Earth ships hunt a mysterious race of genocidal aliens across the enormity of the galaxy, years are ticking off her life, her very sanity at stake. She's got to get away. She's got to get off that ship. But there is nowhere for her to go.
Or is there?
