From The Fated Stars. Larissa and her mercenary friends have gone to the local carnival on a remote planet to celebrate a successful conclusion to a contract job. She was reluctant to go but tagged along in the end.

The excerpt:

The attractions were as lackluster as she’d predicted, until they reached the back of the lot.

 “Ooh, a fortune teller,” Pamila wobbled in her space boots, leaning on Devlin. It was obvious to Larissa those two would be sharing a bunk in his ship before the red sun rose, “I want my future read.”

 Half-baked superstitions rising in her somewhat fuddled mind, Larissa shook her head again. “Bad idea for a mercenary. I can tell you right now, our future’s uncertain as the path of a rogue comet. See, I just saved you a credit – thank me later.” She spun on her heel to walk away as fast as she could. But she was overruled, and they each paid the minimal fee then stumbled into the darkened tent. Larissa paused on the threshold, stunned by the urge to flee. 

 Her attention was riveted on the fortune teller himself.

The story:

Larissa Channer, a tough no-nonsense mercenary in the Sectors, is celebrating success on her last job and a big bonus, with no slightest thought of taking on another assignment anytime soon. Out for a night of carousing with her friends at a third rate carnival on a backwater planet, she walks into the tent of a fake fortune teller and finds herself confronting the most intriguing man she’s ever seen. But something’s wrong, ominous currents lie beneath the surface of their encounter and Larissa can’t leave well enough alone.

Samell, a powerful, high born empathic priest, has been kidnapped from his own primitive planet along with a number of his people, and sold to the shady operator of an interstellar carnival. Kept enslaved, pretending to be a fortune teller while forced by his captor to steal information from the minds of all who come before him, Samell despairs of every breaking free.

Until Larissa walks into his tent and he recognizes the warrior who might mean the difference between life and death.

The situation becomes dire when Larissa and Samell come to the attention of the Shemdylann pirates who kidnapped him in the first place and the deadly Mawreg, aliens who threaten the Sectors. Can she save herself and the empathic alien noble, and derail the Mawreg plot against the Sectors? And will the soldier end up with her prince when all’s said and done?

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