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  Forgetting, however, was another animal altogether. It simply wasn’t possible. She could pretend, she could keep the memories locked away in the farthest recesses of her mind as best she could, but they never really left her. Nor did she want them to.

  “My real name isn’t Kari,” she softly admitted. “And I wasn’t born to the Gy’at Lis.” The princess slowly craned her neck, her glowing blue eyes wide, as she stared at her with rapt interest. Kari told herself she was about to spill her heart out to her traveling companion merely to break the ice and hopefully win her confidence. Maybe if she shared one of her secrets with Dari, the princess would realize she could trust her with one of her own. Tit for tat, a secret for a secret. It was a fair exchange. “Surely you can tell just by looking at me that I’m not even from Galis.”

  As the admission left her lips, she gave up the self-imposed charade. This was more than an attempt at manipulation and she knew it. She was going to tell Dari who she was and where she was from because she actually wanted to. They could very well be butchered after their gastrolight cruiser landed on Khan-Gor. She didn’t want to go to her death still pretending.

  “You are jesting,” Dari weakly returned. “For a certainty you speak in riddles and—”

  “Do I sound like a Galian? Do I even look like one?”

  The princess was quiet for a protracted moment. “Nay.” Dari visibly swallowed as she trained her gaze on her lap. “You have the look of—” Her voice, a smoky feminine sound that slightly reverberated when she spoke, lowered to a mumble. “’Tis not important.”

  Kari’s wine-red eyebrows drew together. “What do you mean? Who do I have the look of?”

  “’Tis naught but the musings of a weary mind.”

  “But—”

  “Leastways,” Dari interrupted, abruptly surging to her feet. “I should check on Bazi.”

  Kari sighed as she watched the princess hurry away. The sleeping male child Dari had fled Arak with and brought to Galis had been looked in on less than five Nuba-minutes past. Indeed, ever since the three of them had made a hasty departure from Kari’s adopted home, narrowly escaping capture from the warriors who would stop at nothing to reclaim their runaway princess, Dari had conveniently needed to check on Bazi every time the two women got close to confiding in each other.

  She absently looked through the gastrolight cruiser’s transparent front window, her gaze raking over the ice-coated planet of Khan-Gor. She wasn’t altogether certain why the urge to tell the princess everything was so strong. At first she had believed it to be out of a sense of camaraderie, a desire to grow closer to the young royal now that they were all the other had. Yet there was more to it, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Maybe it was simply the fact that the princess reminded her of Geris, her real sister’s lifelong best friend. The resemblance between them was uncanny. Were it not for the fact it was next to impossible…

  She shook her head slightly, as if attempting to erase that ludicrous thought from her mind Etch-a-Sketch style. The strikingly beautiful Dari possessed Geris’ dark mahogany coloring and her regal, statuesque bearing—hell, the princess even wore her hair like Geris had in a veil of long, black microbraids that hung to her waist—but the similarities ended once you gazed into her eyes. Dari’s glowing blue orbs were a reminder of the alien civilization Kari’d been whisked away to so many years ago, whereas Geris’ earthy brown eyes had bespoken of home.

  “What is your true name?” Dari whispered, startling Kari. She’d been so lost in thought she hadn’t realized her companion had returned. “From whence do you come?”

  Kari took a deep breath and slowly expelled it. A soft smile tugged at her lips as her gaze found Dari’s. Finally—finally—the princess was dropping her shield, or at least lowering it enough to let her in a bit. They had another three days of travel before the spaceship would breach Khan-Gor, the legendary Planet of the Predators. The only certainty they had now was each other.

  She needed to know Dari’s secret before that third day arrived or she couldn’t protect them from whatever evil the princess feared dwelled there. The only way to gain her confidence was to give her hers first. Trust didn’t come easy for either one of them—a shared trait that was undoubtedly responsible for keeping them both alive this long.

  The irony was not lost on her. The same steel-willed resolve that had permitted survival would ultimately destroy them if they didn’t let it go. Kari had understood this for several days; she realized Dari now did as well. Revealing her past to anyone but the Gy’at Lis had been unthinkable up to this point, yet now here she sat, yearning to tell the princess who she was and where she was from.

  “My name is Kara,” she breathed out for the first time in more years than she could remember. It felt so good to taste her real name on her tongue as it escaped from between her parted lips. “Kara Summers.”

  Chapter One

  Orlando, Florida - First Dimension

  July 4, 1999 A.D. (Anno Domini)

  “What the hell am I doing here?”

  Kara Summers muttered the question to herself as she glanced around the amusement park she had unenthusiastically agreed to attend today. Seated at a picnic table next to a hotdog stand, she plopped her chin on her palm and contemplated why she’d allowed Jonathon to drag her here in the first place. Or more to the point, she thought glumly, why was she dating a grown man with no kids who considered this a good time?

  Disney World. Her lips pinched together in a frown. If this was the happiest place on earth, humanity was fucked.

  Kara decided the fault could be placed at the feet of her older sister, Kyra, for this debacle. She had, after all, talked her into going out with Jonathon in the first place. , Kyra had described Jonathon, a fellow accountant at her sister’s firm, as settled, ready for a commitment, and financially solid.

  In other words, boring.

  “That Spaceship Earth ride was totally rad!” Jonathon enthused. Kara blinked. She hadn’t heard him approach over the sound of her self-pity. He plopped a paper bowl down in front of her that contained a hotdog, French fries, and several ketchup packets. The lemonade came next. “Let’s try the Pirates of the Caribbean ride after we eat.”

  Let’s try a suicide pact and hang ourselves.

  “Well…” Her irritation slowly gave way to guilt. Feeling like the bitch her last boyfriend had called her, she forced a semi-smile to her lips. Jonathon was a good guy. He simply wasn’t turning out to be the guy for her. Fortunately, she could tell he wasn’t getting “the vibe” either so it wasn’t as if ending things would break his heart. Jonathon was no doubt simply trying to make the best of things until they returned to New York City tomorrow. It wouldn’t kill her to do the same. “Sure. Sounds like fun.”

  She supposed the suicide pact could wait. Besides, being a natural redhead with skin the color of porcelain, she’d probably sizzle like a vampire before hanging herself became an issue. Disney World in July. What had she been thinking? Colonizing the planet Mercury would have been less painful.

  Kara opened a ketchup packet and squirted out the contents onto her fries. “Spaceship Earth was pretty interesting, if a little farfetched.”

  “Agreed.” Jonathon pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose with one finger. “As if we’ll ever be able to talk to people in real-time while seeing them simultaneously. Utterly absurd.”

  “Maybe a few generations from now, but we won’t be alive to see it.”

  “Exactly.” He bit off a large piece of hotdog and talked while chewing it. Kara winced. “It would be cool if we did though.”

  She glanced down to her plate and eyed her hotdog. She had a phobia about seeing food bits in people’s mouths. Better to stare at her hotdog than to dry-heave. “Totally.”

  They ate in silence for the next several minutes. The quiet gave Kara time to contemplate what her next course of action should be. Should she state the obvious and tell him that she’d like to b