Seventeen-year-old Thekla needs her quick wits and knife to track down her betrothed, a soldier who has left her at the altar for the third time. Elias the monk travels with her to Constantinople where she meets Irini of Athens, an extraordinarily beautiful orphan who has been brought by powerful Emperor Constantine to marry his son, Co-Emperor Leon. The two women join forces to survive this vigorous, glittering capital of the Roman Empire of the East, rocked by division and strife. But will Thekla help the ambitious and ruthless Irini of Athens find the power that she craves?  

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