Her Instruments

Reese Eddings has enough to do just keeping her rattletrap merchant vessel, the TMS Earthrise, profitable enough to pay food for herself and her micro-crew. So when a mysterious benefactor from her past shows up demanding she rescue a man from slavers, her first reaction is to say "NO!" And then to remember that she sort of promised to repay the loan. But she doesn't remember signing up to tangle with pirates and slavers over a space elf prince…

Reese is only just getting used to running the Earthrise in the black-and with an Eldritch in her crew-when a trip to a colony world gives rise to a whole new problem: Hirianthial is showing powers that even the Eldritch rarely have, and that only in legend. He badly needs training, support and advice, and the only place he can find them is... at home. To see the world of the Eldritch is a once in a lifetime opportunity, a thing of fantasies and rumor. And to finally meet the Eldritch Queen, the author of so many of Reese's windfalls!

The Queen of the Eldritch has offered Reese Eddings a life out of a fairy tale, one beyond the imagination of a poor girl from Mars. Unfortunately, the day Reese reached out to accept Liolesa's offer, Hirianthial's enemies betrayed him - and his entire planet - to a race of sociopathic shapeshifters with dreams of conquest. To beat them, Reese will have to own the power she's always denied herself, and Hirianthial must make peace with his bloody past.

With the Eldritch civil war over, a castle to renovate, and a wedding to prepare for, the last thing Reese is thinking about is taking a break. But the New Year is coming and the Eldritch take their holidays very seriously, so Reese decides it can't hurt to observe the local proprieties. Who knows? Maybe it'll make good practice for what Felith is calling the wedding of the century. Of course, that was before Reese realized it was going to involve gifts. And decorating. And a town full of recalcitrant Eldritch tenants.