Nerilka is sweet and compassionate and just wants to help people. A plague breaks out and her family, who treats her as not good enough and who doesn't have her compassion, tries to block off the masses and let their people suffer. Nerilka escapes her uncaring family and enters the plague, to try to help. Her abilities lead her to Ruatha Hold?, where Alessan? rules. She quietly because an important part of the Hold helping with the plagues and other things. She admires Alessan and falls in love, though she knows it is unrequited love.

***SPOILER****
She watches his romance to Moreta from the background and is happy for him, and is devastated for him when news of Moreta's death comes.

Alessan just wants to die but knows he has responsibilities to his people, Nerilka tries to help him through it but he is too upset. She agrees to a bargain that he will live long enough only to produce an heir, and she will, as the princess from her former hold, take over Ruatha hold. She now just hopes that in the time it take to get pregnant, Alessan will heal enough not to an elixir of death.
***END OF SPOILER*****

A very different Pern story and a different kind of romance, not the hot and heavy, but sweet and compassionate, unconditional with no expectations. You want to cry for her, you want to cry for him, but you understand the position of both of them. They hurt in very different ways, her through rejection from family, and him from the loss of the love of his life.

I really loved many of Anne McCaffrey's dragonrider and dragon singer/song series. At the time, I really liked this book but found it different and probably wouldn't have put it at the top of my Pern books, but today I realize, I remember it best of all of the Pern book I read. A sweet story about a very compassionate woman.