In the final book, Irini returns to the throne. She tricks Constantine into divorcing Maria and exiles her and Constantine’s two daughters to Abbess Thekla’s island convent where Maria goes mad. Irini misleads Constantine into taking revenge on the soldiers who arrested her and the empire erupts into civil war, army against army, Irini against Constantine. Fearing for her life, Irini traps Constantine, wounding his eyes, but Thekla rescues him. Irini is finally empress in her own right. But will Thekla help her hold the throne?

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The Empress Irini Series is a coming of age, four-part YA series with a gothic edge, 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.