Overview

The Sovereigns' Secret London, 1854. The city is a powder keg, choking on fog and war fever, baying for Russian blood. The Crimean War is all but inevitable, a great, grinding machine of politics and profit, ready to consume a generation. But one man holds a single, impossible secret that could stop it all. Ambassador Fedor Zinchenko, a veteran of Borodino who knows the true, bloody cost of war, holds his ""last ace"" a small, leather-bound case. Inside is the ultimate scandal, a single daguerreotype, the only one in existence, of a 17-year-old Princess Victoria-an intimate, nude portrait taken years ago, a secret shared between the young princess, her diplomat lover, and a tragic, reclusive genius of ""Image-Making."" Zinchenko's plan: use the threat of its release to blackmail the Crown and force peace. But on the eve of his desperate gambit, the Ambassador is murdered. The secret is stolen. The last hope for peace is shattered, replaced by a new, terrifying threat. The weapon meant to prevent the war is now in the hands of the very men who crave it. The murder is officially ruled a ""heart seizure,"" but one man knows the truth. Mikhail Volkov, Zinchenko's junior attaché, a hardened soldier in a diplomat's suit, discovers the empty hidden drawer. Now a fugitive from his own embassy and hunted by a compromised Scotland Yard, he is a man alone, with nothing but a thirst for justice and the name of his mentor's last visitor: Lady Copperdale. His only ally is the one person he should trust the least: Eleanor Bright. A demure lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, Eleanor lives a double life, acting as a secret spy for her anti-war father in Parliament. She is an ""ornament"" who sees everything, a ""canary"" in the gilded cage who knows the whispers of the court are more dangerous than cannon fire. Together, this unlikely alliance-the Russian soldier and the English courtier-must navigate a labyrinth of treachery, a city where everyone from the highest levels of government to the press is manipulated by a single, unseen hand. Their target is Lord Harrington, a powerful, ruthless industrialist and patriot, the serpent at the heart of the establishment. Harrington is a master of the Great Game, and he plans to use the ""Sovereign's Secret"" to blackmail Prince Albert, ensuring a war that will line his pockets and expand his power. Volkov and Bright's desperate hunt for proof takes them from the opulent, smoke-filled rooms of the Carlton Club to the cholera-ridden, nightmarish slums of Soho; from the lost history of the tragic ""Image Maker,"" Baron Lightstaff, to the fiery, industrial heart of the printing presses on Fleet Street. As the net tightens, Mikhail and Eleanor are forced from the shadows into a brutal, final confrontation on the rain-slicked rooftops of London. They must not only save themselves but also answer a single, terrible question: In a game of empires, what is the true price of peace? And what secrets must be buried forever to protect a Crown?

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