By Alicia Cameron

The Fall made the world a better place. The collapse of the old society and struggle for survival in its ruins gave humanity a fresh start. The deaths of so many clarified things, it required the survivors to focus on what was really important. The rise of those preternaturally gifted in mind and body allowed humanity to rebuild the world without completely returning to the toxic old ways. Jere is a young doctor, with a gift for psychic healing. Unable to find work in his native Sonova, he takes over an old friend's small-town medical practice after the friend's death in a mysterious fire. Hojer is as different a place from Sonova as Jere could imagine. In Arona, the nation-state of which Hojer is a part, the physically gifted are enslaved, owned by psychic masters who ruthlessly punish any disobedience. Wren is the slave who Jere inherited along with the medical practice. Burned in the fire and broken by a lifetime of cruelty, Wren wants only to serve and be ignored. Jere had never imagined that he would own a slave. He'd certainly never thought he'd fall in love with one. But in Hojer, where simple kindness to a slave is forbidden, loving Wren could be the end for both of them.