Irsud

Sold into slavery, Aleytys' fate was to be worse than that of the usual slave girl's bondage. For her new owners were insectoid and she was to serve as proxy-mother to the old Queen's successor. In short, like an Earth wasp's prey, she would be both bearer and food for that which was to come.

Had Aleytys been any other human, this would have been the end. But she was the wearer of the diadem, that creation of galactic science that linked her nervous system to powers of a strange potency.