My world is silken, jeweled, filled with gold and cakes, and I want to slit its throat.
If my cur of a king hadn't commanded a spell to bind me to this despised life, I would end it without remorse.
His resolve to hold me here confounds me, for I am a queen reviled, the only one in centuries to fail at my task. Instead of seven heirs, I have birthed only a single girl, and without the seven future monarchs, our world is doomed.
My odious king, however, shirks his duty to sire them. Spurning my bed, he slithers sordidly into those of other women.
What solace is left to me? I dispatch assassins after our daughter, but even that fails to bestir me anymore. I would like nothing more than to fold my decrepit, unwanted body on the altar of defeat and have done with these tiresome hours.
At last, beset with sorrow and despair, I flee into the night.
I enter the dumpheap of our city, and there, through a shard of glass, a sharp-toothed enemy offers me a bargain.
He swears that I will bear the seven kings, and he vows that he will spare me after his kind invade our city, provided I promise him some unspecified future request.
I agree, and as a gift, he bestows upon me the magic to spy.
It lets me slink into minds.
Suddenly, every nook and cranny and cabinet of our kingdom falls open to my will. I track my daughter's fiery duel of survival with the rebel she loves--the man who has sworn a vow of vengeance to end her. I follow the court healer as her bleeding compassion battles a smiling but sinister mage--her own lover. I spy on nobles, shapechangers, fops—even children.
Abruptly, after decades of knowing only loathing, estrangement, and isolation, I am vicariously alive... feeling the beating of others' hearts, the heaving of their breath: in passion, in trepidation, in combat--and in love.
They all hope so ardently.
But hope was not in the monster's bargain.
Venture into a bitter queen's glittering court, where the innocent dream and the wicked scheme.
You get multiple points of view, including a main character who is 46 and others aged 12 to 44.
For content warnings (and one comfort warning) see inside matter of book.
