From behind the door, she could hear him pacing. Myrra held her breath.

When she’d gone in there yesterday with Marcus’s afternoon tea service (“it’s still important to observe English customs,” he often said), his desk had been riddled with stacks of tablets, some depicting charts with plummeting downward curves, and others with tightly regimented words darkly marching across each screen. Myrra secretly practiced her reading while pouring him tea; there were lots of good complex phrases to untangle, like “Yearly Decline Tracking” and “Integrity and Stability Projections.” Marcus was standing over them, huffing, with sweat stains murking out from the creases in his arms. Myrra gambled on his patience and asked about the charts. Sometimes Marcus liked to play paternal and explain things to her.

“Oh, it’s just our downfall,” he said with a thin giggle, but then his eyes began to well up, even as he was still forcing out laughter. His hand twitched and he spilled tea all over the tablets. Without reacting, he walked out of the room in a trance, leaving Myrra to clean up the mess. Myrra hadn’t known how to react, but it left her uneasy.

A Preview of "Nophek Gloss"

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GOLDILOCKS

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NOPHEK GLOSS

Book One of The Graven

by

Essa Hansen

When a young man’s planet is destroyed, he sets out on a single-minded quest for revenge across the galaxy in Nophek Gloss, the first book in this epic space opera trilogy debut—perfect for fans of Revenger and Children of Time.

Caiden’s planet is destroyed. His family gone. And his only hope for survival is a crew of misfit aliens and a mysterious ship that seems to have a soul and a universe of its own. Together they will show him that the universe is much bigger, much more advanced, and much more mysterious than Caiden had ever imagined. But the universe hides dangers as well, and soon Caiden has his own plans.

He vows to do anything it takes to get revenge on the slavers who murdered his people and took away his home. To destroy their regime, he must infiltrate and dismantle them from the inside, or die trying.

CHAPTER 1

TENDED AND DRIVEN

The overseers had taken all the carcasses, at least. The lingering stench of thousands of dead bovines wafted on breezes, prowling the air. Caiden crawled from an aerator’s cramped top access port and comforting scents of iron and chemical. Outside, he inhaled, and the death aroma hit him. He gagged and shielded his nose in an oily sleeve.

“Back in there, kid,” his father shouted from the ground.

Caiden crept to the machine’s rust-eaten rim, twelve meters above where his father’s wiry figure stood bristling with tools.