Aeneas is on the run. He has just committed the worst crime a slave could be guilty of, and the blood of his master – one of the most powerful men in the Empire – is still wet over his hands. But he made a promise out of love, and now he has a friend to find. As fugitive with nothing but grief for what he’s lost so violently, he tries his best to blend among humans, struggling to find his footing in a world in which he doesn’t know how to live. When the Vreeni Empire conquered his home planet, Aeneas was only a child, and after carrying his chains for eighteen years, seven of which spent in the hands of a human master who could make him shiver and moan just with a brush of his fingertips, he doesn’t remember how to exist on his own anymore. But when he meets Clodia and her crew, she seems determined to show him he’s not lost in the galaxy. That he can have a purpose, a mission, and a place on her ship. He can find the friend he's lost. And himself, in the journey.