Every day is the same.Sarrin DeGazo waits in her cell. The guards sedate her, bringing her for increasingly harsh and painful experiments, trying to bring out what she fights to keep in. It has been this way since she was a little girl. But no matter the torture, she refuses to show them the monster inside — maybe she can still be human, maybe they will let her go.Galiant Idim, a disgraced freightship captain, is condemned to run the long haul in the Deep Black for a crime he refuses to remember and will always regret. With his head down, he carries his cargo and stays well out of notice of the Speakers. For to defy them is to defy the Gods, and to defy the Gods … well, he won’t ever do it again.....Until the Poet Laureate comes to rescue his sister from her prison, and take her away on Captain Idim’s ship. He knows Gal’s secret, knows it is as dark as his own — if anyone will take the risk, it’s him. But is she the girl he used to know? Is Gal the man the Poet thinks he is, or have the demons already consumed him?