The Blighted Stars

Habitable planets are being destroyed almost as fast as humanity finds them, and the revolutionary Naira Sharp believes she knows why. The Mercator family has run space exploration for decades, taking whatever materials it finds and calling it help for human expansion. Naira intends to dismantle the family from within.

Tarquin Mercator is the heir to the dynasty and does not want the job. He would rather study rocks and read books than run a business empire that spans the galaxy. His father sends him to oversee the settlement of a new planet, and he has no real way to refuse.

Naira takes a post as Tarquin's bodyguard, a disguise that puts her on the settlement ship. Her plan is to destroy it before it makes landfall. That plan fails to account for what happens next: the two of them end up stranded on a dead planet.

To stay alive and keep her identity hidden, Naira has to work alongside the man she has sworn to hate. This is the first book of a space opera trilogy, and the pair's forced partnership leads them toward a conspiracy larger than either of them.