They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.
So begins the story of Queen Talyien, daughter of Warlord Yeshin, a man who declared civil war on the ruling clan years before her birth, and who only accepted a truce on the condition that his daughter be betrothed to their heir and be crowned queen.
Or so the books might say. She herself is convinced of it; that her moment of failure began at the point when she could not hold her marriage together. Five years of unstable rule followed Prince Rayyel’s departure, until the land could no longer utter the queen’s name without a hint of sarcasm and more than a shred of anger. She fought back, retreating behind an armour of barbed words and threats. To them, Warlord Yeshin, the mass murderer, and Talyien, Yeshin’s bitch pup, are one and the same; with Yeshin dead, Talyien took the brunt of their hatred.
But Queen Talyien and Tali are different edges of the same sword—one a mask, the other a woman. Tali, who grew up motherless in Oka Shto, whose only family was a frail old man who could be both terrible and kind at once, tried to seek solace in her betrothal to the indifferent Prince Rayyel. Initially rebuffed, later gradually accepted, she found her world shattered when she learned of her betrothed’s relationship with another warlord’s daughter. She, in turn, found comfort in the arms of her oldest friend. Afterwards, she resolved to put everything behind her and embrace her responsibilities, rendered bitter by reality.
Rayyel, however, abandons her three years later. And she doesn’t hear from him again until five years into her rule as queen, when a message comes asking her to meet with him across the sea, in Anzhao City in the Empire of Ziri-nar-Orxiaro. Her eagerness to reconcile is mixed with her anger. Her general suggests she use the opportunity to declare war against her husband’s clan, as he has been urging her to do for years; against his will, she travels with a handful of guards and her adviser, relying on political goodwill to carry them the rest of the way.
She is sorely disappointed when she realizes that the power of a queen of a small nation is hardly recognized by officials of the mighty empire. A deputy, Ino Qun, shelters her and insults her almost in the same breath; Qun’s wife drops cryptic words. On the way to the meeting, chaos breaks out in the streets, and Tali finds herself separated—whether by accident or on purpose—from her guards. She wanders the streets and meets a con artist, Khine Lamang, whom she assists in swindling a shopkeeper. In exchange, he takes her to the restaurant where Prince Rayyel is waiting. Prince Rayyel is accompanied by a priestess and the governor of Anzhao City, Gon Zheshan.
The meeting goes nowhere; Prince Rayyel wants Queen Talyien to cede half of Jin-Sayeng to him. The treaty that put them both on the throne required that they rule together, but never laid out the circumstances. Before the meeting can conclude, they are attacked by assassins. Tali finds herself alone and without her guards in the slums, where her position matters even less. She finds one of her own guards in prison; before he is beaten to death by the city watch, he tells her that her own guards have been acting suspiciously and she would have been better served if she had kept her old captain, Agos. She encounters a gambling lord, Lo Bahn, and barely escapes being made into his whore; the only sympathetic soul she meets is Khine, whom she runs into again. She initially distrusts him—everyone she has met has only been looking out for themselves.
But Khine is persistent, and she slowly grows to enjoy his company, sharing what she can of her life, or at least what she feels she is allowed to. With him, she finds it easy to be herself, to drop the queen’s act and be seen as she is, unjudged, with no expectations.
Lo Bahn catches up to her while she is recuperating in Khine’s abode. She escapes and learns from her maidservant that Gon Zheshan is holding her husband captive. She also confirms the deaths of her adviser, Arro, and what appears to be half her guardsmen. The other half, including her captain, Nor, are missing.
Talyien finds herself trying to seek aid from the emperor’s Fifth Son, Prince Yuebek, to save Rayyel. She is separated from Khine on the road, but is picked up by Governor Radi Ong—Prince Yuebek’s father-in-law—and taken to Zorheng City, a fortress on the riverbank seemingly built by mages. It doesn’t take long for Tali to surmise that Prince Yuebek is a madman. He offers to marry Talyien and kills his own wife as a show of solidarity. And because Talyien continues to refuse, he throws her in prison.
Months later, Tali wakes up in a strange room, where she encounters the ghosts of her brother and her father. Yeshin berates her, telling her she has failed because she fell in love with Rayyel. This confuses her, because she thinks her duty was to love him—her zealousness came from both her own feelings and her loyalty to her father. She realizes she is still being chased by an assassin and narrowly escapes. She finds a note on the dead assassin telling her that her husband was behind the attempt on her life.
She returns to Khine, but the comfort of his company is short-lived as she finds herself reunited with not just her guards but also her old friend Agos. She also learns there is an embargo preventing travel from the empire to Jin-Sayeng.
With Khine and the gambling lord, Lo Bahn, she sets in motion a plan to infiltrate Governor Zheshan’s office and confront Rayyel. But here she comes face-to-face not with her husband but with Prince Yuebek, who reveals to her two things: that he is a mage with a strong connection to the agan, and that he planned everything, including the assassin, in order to convince her to fall for him and discard her husband. Because none of his tricks worked, Yuebek threatens her son, telling Talyien he knows the truth—that the boy could be a bastard whose life is forfeit if the rest of the nation finds out. He also tells her that it was Talyien’s own father, Yeshin, who promised her to him first, in exchange for his power and his army; her betrothal to Rayyel was a sham. Warlord Yeshin’s desire to win his war was too strong, and he undermined his own treaty in order to claim victory once and for all. Talyien’s own men had betrayed her to deliver her to Yuebek.
Refusing to believe Yuebek’s claims, Talyien delivers him a killing blow and watches as he runs into a burning room. She returns to Lo Bahn’s, where Governor Zheshan commits suicide after confirming how Yuebek has attempted to blackmail him into betraying Rayyel.
Still reeling from everything she has learned, she receives a note from Rayyel asking for another meeting. Even though Tali is aware it might be another trap, Khine convinces her to go, as she is still holding on to the hope that somehow she can salvage her marriage.
Tali finally meets Rai, who confesses he has always loved her. The reader learns that it is the knowledge of his wife’s affair, and that her son may not be his, that caused him to walk away; already damned by the politics that gave birth to their lives, their mistakes hastened the ruin. He swears to make things right, that he is seeking mages that will help reveal the truth, and that if the boy is not his, he will kill him himself.
The novel ends with Tali trying to grasp on to the last shreds of her father’s rhetoric: A wolf of Oren-yaro does not beg. A wolf of Oren-yaro suffers in silence. But her downfall is just beginning…