Choices

Amelia Herzog has found a home on Eclipsis—or so she hopes. She's been tested for the telepathic gift of crypta she shares with the 'Graven, the telepathic aristocracy who rule over this Protected World, and offered a place in the elite seminary of La Sapienza. Soon, Amelia hopes, she'll become Eclipsian Amalie and leave her Terran self behind.

So why does Amelia feel that she's back in high school? Starting a new kind of education, at thirty-five, alongside students in their teens, is bad enough. But in this regimented and class-conscious society, Amelia seems to break a taboo every time she opens her mouth. Her only comfort is the telepathic "visits" of her lover, Dominic, Margrave Aranyi, visits which break one of the biggest taboos of all. And when she's finally ready to take her place among other gifted people, doing the demanding work she has trained for, something is holding her back from participating—something she doesn't understand and can't control.

Despite hard work and good intentions, Amelia faces some difficult choices. Should she dedicate herself to becoming a sibyl, the most powerful position for a gifted woman? Or has life on Terra, among the ungifted, made it impossible? Can she hope for love, perhaps even marriage, with a gifted man? Or is Eclipsian marriage, with its strict sex roles, too limiting for a gifted woman to endure? And in reaching her decisions, Amelia is forced to question the motives of the one person she thought she could trust. Is he her lover—or her enemy?