In the year of the great King Darius's death, when the Persian host swept westward to drown the free cities of Greece in fire, a fleet darker than storm clouds came down the Aegean. At its prow stood Artemisia—once a Greek girl sold into chains, now the Empire's most feared weapon, her hatred tempered in blood until it gleamed like a blade. City after city fell before her. And yet, in the narrow waters where the Greeks made their stand, one man refused to break: Themistocles of Athens, a general born of no dynasty, who turned the straits and the sea itself against her, who bled her armada ship by ship, who looked upon her thousand sails and did not kneel.

So Artemisia reached for a weapon no quiver holds. Under a banner of parley she summoned him to her flagship—her territory now, her deck beneath his boots—and laid before him life, rank, and dominion, if only he would deliver Greece to her king. But words were only the veil. What she truly offered was herself: the one man alive who had ever matched her, in war and in want, and she meant to have him beside her rather than beneath her heel. The lamplight swung. Her voice dropped to silk. And as she closed the distance between them, she waited—half in hunger, half in fury—to learn whether her seduction would succeed...