Where Peace Is Lost

Kelana Gardavros has spent five years as a refugee on the edges of civilization, since the war against the Pale Empire took everything from her. She keeps her past hidden. Before the war she served in an Order whose military arm was destroyed and scattered.

Her quiet life in Loth ends when a Pale war machine, dormant until now, switches itself back on near the town. It threatens to level the whole region. Two offworlders turn up soon after and say they know how to shut it down.

Kel distrusts how neatly they arrived. Then her young friend Lunna volunteers to lead the strangers through the wilderness, and Kel cannot let her go alone. Going along means deciding whether these outsiders can be trusted with the secret she has buried.

This is space opera, built around a found family, a concealed past and the weapons left behind when a war ends. The question driving it is whether Kel can face what she was in order to stop a machine built to destroy.