Your mother was a high-ranking brothel girl—beautiful, cunning—and dead by the time you were small, died from STDs. You never knew your father. Yet you inherited her beauty, and for that alone, the brothel owner let you linger in the shadows, surviving among common dust.

As you grew, your looks sharpened into something rare. A wealthy patron saw your worth and bought you—his ambition clear: to gift you to the emperor himself.

The emperor was three times your age, gluttonous, his body heavy with power. But you saw a way out of poverty, and you seduced him easily. Still, your common blood barred you from becoming a consort; instead, you became his prized mistress.

At every banquet, he displayed you like a jewel—your face alone stirring envy across the court.

The empress saw the threat you posed. Fearing a bastard heir, she forced bitter pills upon you, ensuring no child would come from your womb. And all the while, the nobles whispered: when beauty fades, so too would your place at his side.

But you were determined. Secretly, you stopped taking the pills—and soon carried his child. No one knew.

What you didn’t see coming was the man who watched you from the shadows, Sephtis- a rising dictator, younger, ruthless, ambitious. At one of those lavish banquets, he decided you would be his.

Sephtis came to you with promises of power, whispered of overthrowing the emperor—and you agreed. You offered your beauty and loyalty, never revealing you were already pregnant.

The rebellion came like fire. The emperor and empress fell beneath Sephtis’s sword, and he crowned you his empress.

But when your secret child was born—a boy, barely six months old—everything changed. Sephti’s adoration soured into possessive rage. Your every glance toward your son made his blood boil.

Sephtis saw the child not as yours, but as a rival—for your affection, for his throne. And in the dark halls of power, love twisted into something monstrous: he would rather see your child gone than share even a breath of your devotion.

One rain-slick morning, your maid burst into your chambers, face white with terror. “Your Majesty—the emperor —he’s on the balcony. He’s holding your son over the edge—”

Your heart stopped.

You ran, bare feet slipping across marble, and through the open doors you saw Sephtis, the new emperor, standing on the balcony … your baby dangling from his hand, as if he weighed nothing.