Ehli-nikkalu, eldest daughter of the Hittite emperor, is married to a mere vassal of her father. But despite her status, her “foreignness” and her inability to produce an heir drive a wedge between her and the court that surrounds her. Her secretary is mysteriously murdered while carrying the emperor a message that would indict the loyalty of his vassal, and she adopts the dead man’s orphaned children out of a guilty sense of responsibility.
When a young cousin she has never met becomes a pretender to the throne and mobilizes roving armies of the poor and dispossessed, the priority of her loyalties becomes even more suspect. Then she discovers a terrible secret that could destabilize the present regime if the pretender ever learns of it.
With the help of a kindly scribe, her brave young ward, and an embittered former soldier trapped in debt and self-doubt, she sets out to save the kingdom and prove herself to her father… and along the way, learn something about love.