Body for the Fugitive

In the Empire of Avarre, the wealthy can purchase youth, beauty, strength—and the bodies of those desperate enough to sell them.But some bodies are never truly abandoned.Identity examiner Saelis Dorran has discovered an impossible crime: people whose bodies have been sold remain conscious inside them, unable to move, speak, or prevent strangers from wearing their flesh. The trail leads to an exclusive underground auction where human lives are catalogued by beauty, fertility, endurance, and magical ability.To enter the auction, fugitive transfer courier Kerron Auvray must borrow the body of Lady Quenara Hest, an aristocrat believed to have willingly surrendered it.She did not.Quenara is still awake beneath him.Trapped together in one body, Kerron and Quenara must survive an elegant marketplace where buyers bid on living people—and where someone is willing to pay a fortune for the two consciousnesses they carry. Meanwhile, Saelis's closest friend accepts a perfectly legal body contract, only to discover that imperial law can create a prison as cruel as any black market.As Saelis fights to expose the trade, her feelings for Kerron become harder to separate from the bodies he chooses to wear. Loving a man without one face may be possible.Trusting him with another person's body may not be.A Body for the Fugitive is the second book in The Empire of Borrowed Bodies, a dark romantic fantasy series about stolen identities, dangerous desire, political rebellion, and the question of whether a soul can remain free when the body containing it belongs to someone else.