It took years, tears, and promises she’s not sure she can keep, but Paradis Tane has finally convinced her grandparents to allow her to leave Danae, join Oversight, and become a synchronist–her one and only chance to live on her own, away from family duties. But her position as an apprentice is tenuous, and one wrong step during training could send her home in disgrace.

It’s all going well until she meets fellow apprentice Sacheri, an irrepressible flirt who teases her and asks far too many probing questions of the mentors. Paradis knows he’s trouble the moment she sees him, but there’s no resisting his kindness and charm.

When Sacheri’s research turns up troubling questions about the history of Oversight itself, Paradis must decide if their friendship–and her own sense of justice– are worth the risks to her future as a synchronist if she aids him…

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Working odd jobs across the Outer Ring gets a little lonely sometimes—not everyone loves having a synchronist with supraliminal perception around. But all Sacheri wants, he tells himself, is to wander the stars.

Then he takes a salvage run to an abandoned moon where he meets the wry, reserved, strictly-by-the-rules archivist Jin. Mesmerized by their confidence and charm, Sacheri can’t resist showing off his abilities–and instead of the damaged ai he was tracking, he stumbles onto a signal left by a synchronist who went missing decades earlier.

Sacheri knows from previous experience that pursuing the truth—never mind justice—could destroy everything he loves. He would defy his employers, the institution responsible for the myconeural networks that make him a synchronist, and the leadership of several worlds.And it would complicate his new, passionate, and impossibly sweet relationship with Jin. They might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him, but they work for the very entities that ended Sacheri’s last investigation.

He knows better than to risk it.

But he’s never been able to turn away from someone in need, and there’s a voice in the void calling for aid…

The other side of the Outer Rings isn’t far enough to escape Meri’s past…

In the seven years since leaving their scavenger planet homeworld with the synchronists, Meri has made a good life for themself in the merchant corps. They like the work, they’re figuring out a situationship with way-out-of-their-league diplomat Xavia Tane, and they’ve made friends among humans and fai alike. If their next sale—an event collaboration with Xavia— is successful, Meri will finally have proven to themself and everyone else that they are right where they belong.

Then the boss’s shiny new flagship goes missing in a gate storm while carrying Meri’s cargo, station fai start acting strange, and a distant cousin shows up full of resentment and vague threats, throwing Meri off their game.

Everything falls apart.

With the help of the notoriously contrary fai known as the Curator, Meri untangles the connections. Everything leads back to their family and the planet Meri swore never to return to, but no one else–not even Xavia–seems to realize how far Meri’s family will go to get what they want…