Irini’s conniving mother-in-law, her five jealous step-brothers, and her own husband, Co-Emperor Leon, threaten Irini’s safety in Constantinople. She summons Abbess Thekla, her knife-wielding friend, to bring her sharp wits and courage to get Irini safely through childbirth in the Great Palace. Thekla owes Irini her life and thus her loyalty but she is staggered by Irini’s powerful ambitions which far exceed being docile wife and mother. Can Thekla survive Irini’s vengeful nature and the bloody aftermath of Irini’s ruthless ambition?

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The Empress Irini Series is a coming of age, four-part YA series set in the Roman Empire of the East - brimming with fear, intrigue and violence. In this series, Janet McGiffin presents us with a world in which banal realities like hunger and survival sit cheek by jowl with the fantastical worlds of Medieval Christianity and Greek Mythology: Fates, curses, miracles and the ghosts of bygone patriarchs. Our central character, Thekla, a seventeen year old on the run in Constantinople, must rely solely upon her own courage and quick wits to survive this vigorous, glittering capital of the East.