A Dangerous Talent for Time

On Alysia, mutant Talents are banned because of their feared abilities.

The most dangerous of all is the Tellurian Talent that has the ability to manipulate time.

Richard Steele knows this because he runs the Timelab and is trying to control a renegade Talent from deep in his past that keeps changing the timelines, and most often not for the better.

In that past, Elyssas Armstrong watches her home burned, her mother kidnapped and her father, Lord Armstrong, captain of the King's Northern Defense, killed by greedy invading barbarians that descend onto her land after the king's untimely death. A young noble girl, alone and running for her life is vulnerable. She runs right into the clutches of Boris, slave trader and Bordello operator. Caught and then traded for a slave to a handsome and brusque young lord, named Brand Elitas, Elyssa is torn between killing him for his arrogance, and loving him for his charm.

They get thrown into the company of Hieronymous Steele, ex-prime minister to the late king and chancy companion. He shows them the first piece of a riddle and suggests that when they find the complete riddle, they will discover the answer to saving the realm.

Finding the rest of the riddle takes them on a wild adventure throughout the realm where they meet musical Woodspites, a deadly merchant miner, a wise-cracking spy from the North, a mud smeared swamper, an audacious sea captain and his daughter, and many others that threaten their lives, or their hearts.

But there is a wild powerful Talent in the mix who doesn't realize what he or she is doing and Timelab Director Richard Steele must pay the price. Once again as the past is changed, the future changes and he is thrown into futures he would rather avoid. He must find the Talent at all cost before the timelines are ripped apart, and then figure out how to stop him.