Power is the most addictive drug. For five hundred years, the world has been ruled from the shadows by a secret matriarchal order: The Matron Circle. They are the invisible hand behind every government, every bank, and every war. Their rule is absolute, governed by a monstrous, ancient creed:"A daughter must inherit power. A mother must die for it."Seventeen-year-old Nyira Kaneza has spent her life in hiding, moving from city to city, taught to be invisible by a mother paralyzed by fear.
Nyira believes she is nobody. She is wrong. A routine DNA test exposes Nyira as the last surviving heir of the Fifth Line-a forbidden bloodline of Queens who were erased a generation ago for being too powerful to control. Now, the Matrons have found her. Dragged into the subterranean City of Daughters beneath Istanbul, Nyira is forced to compete in the Gauntlet: seven brutal trials designed to break her mind and body.
She must survive poison banquets, blindfolded combat in arenas of bone, and the psychological torture of the Mirror Labyrinth. Surrounded by rivals who want her dead and a servant boy named Kai who may be her only ally-or her deadliest betrayer-Nyira faces an impossible choice:Claim the throne and become the villain they want her to be. Or die before sunrise. But Nyira has a third option. She doesn't want to rule the game.
She wants to flip the board. From the underground bunkers of Berlin to the snowy peaks of the Swiss Alps, Queen of Nothing is a dark, cinematic thriller about the cost of power, the lies of history, and a girl who decides that the only way to save the world is to burn the throne."No daughter will ever kill a mother again."
Power is the most addictive drug. For five hundred years, the world has been ruled from the shadows by a secret matriarchal order: The Matron Circle. They are the invisible hand behind every government, every bank, and every war. Their rule is absolute, governed by a monstrous, ancient creed:"A daughter must inherit power. A mother must die for it."Seventeen-year-old Nyira Kaneza has spent her life in hiding, moving from city to city, taught to be invisible by a mother paralyzed by fear.
Nyira believes she is nobody. She is wrong. A routine DNA test exposes Nyira as the last surviving heir of the Fifth Line-a forbidden bloodline of Queens who were erased a generation ago for being too powerful to control. Now, the Matrons have found her. Dragged into the subterranean City of Daughters beneath Istanbul, Nyira is forced to compete in the Gauntlet: seven brutal trials designed to break her mind and body.
She must survive poison banquets, blindfolded combat in arenas of bone, and the psychological torture of the Mirror Labyrinth. Surrounded by rivals who want her dead and a servant boy named Kai who may be her only ally-or her deadliest betrayer-Nyira faces an impossible choice:Claim the throne and become the villain they want her to be. Or die before sunrise. But Nyira has a third option. She doesn't want to rule the game.
She wants to flip the board. From the underground bunkers of Berlin to the snowy peaks of the Swiss Alps, Queen of Nothing is a dark, cinematic thriller about the cost of power, the lies of history, and a girl who decides that the only way to save the world is to burn the throne."No daughter will ever kill a mother again."
