Liminal space shadows an.., p.49
Liminal Space (Shadows & Light Book One), page 49
Unless they weren’t irrelevant, and the Dominion’s relationship with the Taiyoks had never grown so friendly in the previous cycle, and this had somehow negatively impacted the outcome of the Rasu War, which had a similarly negative effect on the Dzhvar conflict. Unless, unless, unless.
She tried to impose a measure of calm on her racing thoughts. There was no reason to overreact; it was entirely reasonable to assume Mesme had described how the interaction played out in the previous cycle, in which case the mismatch made sense. Perhaps in its prior incarnation, Mesme had been an Asterion with direct knowledge of the failed negotiations. Perhaps even someone her own prior incarnation had worked with.
Her own prior incarnation….
“Ever since the Oneiroi Nebula, the kyoseil has been changing me. Filing away the rough edges, lopping off the dynamic, assertive veneer in favor of a deeper, more expansive, almost metaphysical worldview. The kyoseil’s worldview, one might posit.”
You are everything you were.
“No, I’m not. I’m something else now. Maybe better and stronger in some ways, but not the same.” She tilted her head toward Dashiel, who had stopped working to shift around and gaze at her. “See, Dashiel agrees.”
“Nika, I don’t think you….” He faltered, his words trailing off.
“You can’t bring yourself to refute it, because you know I’m right.” She proffered a brave smile. “I don’t regret this turn of events. I’ve done what I had to do to save my people, and I’ll keep on forging this path so long as it means I can make a difference.”
She was practically spinning in circles through the living room now, and on the next revolution she threw herself at the window glass, clinging to it with her palms for dear life.
Like one of her journal entries.
As if she were telling the story to herself.
“You had to be someone intimately involved in the fight against the Dzhvar, right? Or else you wouldn’t know as many details of how the conflict was waged as you do. Someone who was also involved in the fight against the Rasu. Mnemosyne was a goddess, which suggests you were a woman—”
Oh, stars, the fucking goddess of memory! Her breath caught in her throat and stayed there. Everything fit. Everything.
Yes, Mesme could have been another Asterion…but it wasn’t.
At various times, she’d considered the possibility of the Kat being virtually everyone she knew. Yet she'd unconsciously erected a wall in the form of the most epic blind spot in creation, all to prevent herself from seeing what some part of her must have already known.
It was her.
She slid down the glass until she landed on the floor. Mesme had nurtured her so carefully ever since they’d met. Guided her and taught her. Protected her and helped her deepen her connection with kyoseil. Kyoseil that Mesme enjoyed an oh-so-special relationship with.
She’d never asked Mesme how it came to be bonded so closely with kyoseil. She’d never asked the Kat so many things. And when she had asked, Mesme had deflected and obfuscated rather than answer, as was its way. Because it was protecting an ocean of secrets…and one devastating secret above all.
And Alex knew. The look she’d noticed back on the Siyane had been one of warning, of fear that Mesme teetered on the brink of making a mistake. Alex and Mesme shared so much history, spanning decades before Nika met either of them.
How long had Alex known? Since the beginning? No, that didn’t make any sense. Alex had only figured out the time travel aspect of the puzzle during the Rasu War, and Nika had stood at her side while she’d noodled it out piece by piece until reaching a genuine eureka moment. Alex lacked the capacity to be so deceptive as to performatively fake such an elaborate ruse. So within the last three and a half years.
She didn’t have to wonder why Alex was keeping the truth from her. She’d give up her eternal soul to return this knowledge to the other side of the wall, to remain blissfully unaware of her fate.
A million years. A million years alone. Mesme enjoyed no lover, no soulmate, and had made it explicitly clear that it was the only person who traveled into the past. Dashiel had not accompanied it—her.
Dashiel had not accompanied her.
Her hands came to her mouth; she genuinely couldn’t breathe now. She gasped in air, but it failed to reach her lungs. The room pitched as her vision swam.
This could not be her fate!
Yet as tears overflowed her eyes to stream freely down her face, a fire kindled and sparked in her soul. The same fire that forced her to climb to her feet and stand up in a rain-soaked alley nine years ago, when she possessed nothing in the universe but her name. The fire that propelled 8,000 copies of her to fight and run and die until the Rasu stronghold in her galaxy fell. The fire that kept her fighting to defend every Axis World from the relentless onslaught of Rasu in the last days of the war.
She had never accepted defeat, no matter how overwhelmingly the odds were stacked against her. She’d driven herself to the edge of madness in her refusal to accept defeat.
This could not be her fate? No. This would not be her fate.
Sobs wracked her body nonetheless. She wasn’t ready to take up this mantle. She felt her mind fracturing beneath the weight of it. It was too heavy to bear.
So sorry I’m running late. I’ll be home in ten minutes.
Panic gripped her chest until she was hyperventilating. Oh no, Dashiel….
She couldn't hope to pull herself together in ten minutes, nor in ten hours. After their quarrel over her First Generation secret nearly ended their relationship, she'd promised him she wouldn’t lie to him again. But she’d never be able to look him in the eye, tears flowing, and force the words past her lips. Never be able to watch as his world collapsed in the face of such a terrible truth.
There must be a path to navigate this nightmare and alter her fate, but she wouldn’t find its entrance here, bawling like a lunatic on the floor of her flat.
Before she could find the strength to fight, she needed to find the strength to breathe.
She stumbled to her feet, uncertain of what to do or where to go—
A swirl of ice-blue lights materialized in front of her to coalesce into the semblance of a winged creature. A phoenix…her heart leapt in recognition. It had always been there. It had always been her.
Mesme extended an ethereal hand to her. Come with me.
There was no need for thought, no space for decision. She accepted its hand, allowing the lights to envelop her and whisk her away.
The Story Continues In
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
SHADOWS & LIGHT BOOK TWO
(Amaranthe ♦ 24)
Available Summer 2026
PREORDER TODAY
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Here we are at last: the final trilogy in the Amaranthe saga. Twenty-five books. Eleven short stories. Sixty years of adventures (going back to Meridian), plus a million years before that. This is the story I envisioned telling when I started working on Starshine, and never in my wildest dreams imagined I would actually get to tell it. Thanks to you, the most awesome readers in our universe, I do.
If you haven’t had a chance to read my blog post, “For All the Marbles,” I hope you will. I talk about why Shadows & Light brings Amaranthe to a close, and what I have planned next. You can read it here: gsjennsen.com/blog.
And, hey, if you loved LIMINAL SPACE, tell someone about the Amaranthe novels. Leave a review, share your thoughts on social media, annoy your coworkers in the break room by talking about your favorite characters. Reviews are the backbone of a book’s success, but there is no single act that will sell a book better than word-of-mouth.
My part of this deal is to write a book worth talking about—your part of the deal is to do the talking. If you keep doing your bit, I get to write a lot more books for you.
Also, I want to hear from my readers. If you loved the book—or if you didn’t—let me know. The beauty of independent publishing is its simplicity: there’s the writer and the readers. Without any overhead, I can find out what I’m doing right and wrong directly from you, which is invaluable in making the next book better than this one. And the one after that. And the twenty after that.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to my beta readers, editors and artists, who made everything about this book better, and to my family, who continue to put up with an egregious level of obsessive focus on my part for months at a time.
I also want to add a personal note of thanks to everyone who has read my books, left a review at a retailer, Goodreads or other sites, sent me a personal email expressing how the books have impacted you, or posted on social media to share how much you enjoyed them. You make this all worthwhile, every day.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
G. S. JENNSEN lives somewhere in the U.S., in a locale that may or may not be where she lived the last time she published a book (she’s a gypsy at heart), with her husband and two dogs. She has become an internationally bestselling author since her first novel, Starshine, was published in 2014. She has chosen to continue writing under an independent publishing model to ensure the integrity of her stories and her ability to execute on the vision she has for their telling.
While she has been a lawyer, a software engineer and an editor, she’s found the life of a full-time author preferable by several orders of magnitude. When she isn’t writing, she’s gaming or working out or getting lost in the mountains that loom large outside the windows in her home. Or she’s dealing with a flooded basement, or standing in a line at Walmart reading the tabloid headlines and wondering who all of those people are. Or sitting on her back porch with a glass of wine, looking up at the stars, trying to figure out what could be up there.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Amaranthe Universe
Dramatis Personae
Maps
The Story So Far
Contents
OVERTURE
PART I: INCEPTION 1: Elakrin Stellar System
2: New Luna
3: Akeso
4: Concord HQ
5: Concord HQ
6: Scholite
7: Domor
8: Concord HQ
9: Elakrin Stellar System
10: Akeso
11: Akeso
12: Akeso
13: Concord HQ
14: CAF Aurora
15: Omoikane Initiative
INTERMEZZO I
PART II: MYTHS & MONSTERS 16: Scholite
17: Mshak
18: Ares
19: Planet A-468C Orbit
20: Earth
21: Ares
22: Vrachnas Homeworld
23: Concord HQ
24: Akeso
25: Concord HQ
26: Romane
27: Domor
28: Ares
29: Ares
30: Namino
31: Galenai Homeworld
32: Concord HQ
33: Akeso
34: Miaon's Planet
INTERMEZZO II
PART III: KING’S GAMBIT 35: Ares
36: Concord HQ
37: Kiyora
38: CAF Aurora
39: The Presidio
40: Brizo
41: Ares
42: Akeso
43: Adjunct Shi
44: Mirai
45: The Presidio
46: Concord HQ
47: Scholite
48: Concord HQ
49: Akeso
50: Seneca
51: Mshak
52: Concord HQ
53: Domor
INTERMEZZO III
PART IV: ENTANGLEMENT 54: Mirai
55: Idryma
56: Concord HQ
57: Seneca
58: Concord HQ
59: Domor
60: Akeso
61: Ares
62: Concord HQ
INTERMEZZO IV
PART V: The LONG REACH of DESTINY 63: Ares
64: Ares
65: Mshak
66: Romane
67: Volie
68: CAF Aurora
69: Concord HQ
70: Mirai
71: Mirai
AUTHOR'S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Table of Contents
Title Page
Amaranthe Universe
Dramatis Personae
Maps
The Story So Far
Contents
OVERTURE
PART I: INCEPTION 1: Elakrin Stellar System
2: New Luna
3: Akeso
4: Concord HQ
5: Concord HQ
6: Scholite
7: Domor
8: Concord HQ
9: Elakrin Stellar System
10: Akeso
11: Akeso
12: Akeso
13: Concord HQ
14: CAF Aurora
15: Omoikane Initiative
INTERMEZZO I
PART II: MYTHS & MONSTERS 16: Scholite
17: Mshak
18: Ares
19: Planet A-468C Orbit
20: Earth
21: Ares
22: Vrachnas Homeworld
23: Concord HQ
24: Akeso
25: Concord HQ
26: Romane
27: Domor
28: Ares
29: Ares
30: Namino
31: Galenai Homeworld
32: Concord HQ
33: Akeso
34: Miaon's Planet
INTERMEZZO II
PART III: KING’S GAMBIT 35: Ares
36: Concord HQ
37: Kiyora
38: CAF Aurora
39: The Presidio
40: Brizo
41: Ares
42: Akeso
43: Adjunct Shi
44: Mirai
45: The Presidio
46: Concord HQ
47: Scholite
48: Concord HQ
49: Akeso
50: Seneca
51: Mshak
52: Concord HQ
53: Domor
INTERMEZZO III
PART IV: ENTANGLEMENT 54: Mirai
55: Idryma
56: Concord HQ
57: Seneca
58: Concord HQ
59: Domor
60: Akeso
61: Ares
62: Concord HQ
INTERMEZZO IV
PART V: THE LONG REACH OF DESTINY 63: Ares
64: Ares
65: Mshak
66: Romane
67: Volie
68: CAF Aurora
69: Concord HQ
70: Mirai
71: Mirai
Author's Note
About the Author
G. S. Jennsen, Liminal Space (Shadows & Light Book One)
