Does power shape the user, or does the user shape the power?
The Ly Kai came through a gate between the stars, naively seeking adventure. They found betrayal. In their attempt to defy their leader, Araxis, plan to dominate them, they destroyed their only way home. Destroyed. Physically. Now, they live in fear that his mental essence will find them and exact revenge.
For the refugee men, life in the tower of Kryie Karth is a daily struggle with starvation and death. For Kaphri, the lone child survivor, it is also a never-ending confrontation with hatred and resentment as the others question why only she, of all their women and children, survived Araxis' massacre.
But the Twenty-six—-the name she has dubbed the men—know far more than they admit. On the night she is destined by her Birthstar to take leadership of their dwindling numbers, secrets long pent up by fury and fear erupt, and Kaphri discovers that everything she's been taught is a lie.
Terrified that she is destined for evil, she disavows her starpower and flees out into an alien world with her tiny dragon companion, Gemma.
But Araxis did terrible things to this world in preparation for the Ly Kai's arrival, and when three Geffitzi warriors capture Kaphri, their leader, Frax, is determined to use her to set things right. Caught between a growing attraction for the harsh warrior and fear for her life, she doesn't dare tell him she may be exactly the opposite- the means for Araxis to restore his power and renew his reign of terror and destruction.