The plague on Halcyon Deep kills the gifted first — and the Accord’s best epidemiologist can’t heal a single victim.
Dr. Imeni Adesanya has only her mind, her method, and a security chief who hasn’t let himself feel anything in twelve years. Locked in quarantine while the station counts its dead, Imeni and Cassar Vey trace an outbreak that is looking less like nature and more like a test — and the thing running the test has a name no one is supposed to say.
She trusts data. He trusts the dose that keeps his gift asleep. To stop Hollowbloom, she’ll have to accept an imperfect answer, and he’ll have to feel — on purpose, in the open, whatever it costs.
A complete standalone romance with a guaranteed HEA, set in the Mercy Lines universe.