In the decadent royal court of Khazar, where secrets fester like an untreated wound, one name carries equal parts intrigue and carnal infamy – Olinka Red, the king's most notorious concubine.

Now 36 years of age, though bearing a youthful, ageless beauty, Olinka has reigned as Prince Vukasin's prized paramour for over a decade. Her porcelain visage and hourglass figure, adorned by a riotous mane of fiery red curls cascading well past her waist, is the caliber of fleshly perfection bards compose epics about. Yet behind those smoldering emerald eyes, Olinka masks a soul blackened by disillusionment and boredom.

Born the only daughter of a Varangan silk merchant and his barren wife, Olinka's path was forever altered at 16 when her father went into ruinous debt to the Khazari royal family. With no male heir to barter, he offered up his daughter's maidenhood to the lecherous Prince Vukasin to spare his own life and business. The old lecher readily accepted, immediately imprisoning the beauteous redhead in his harem.

For years, Olinka endured the humiliations and nightly degradations of palace concubine life, subjected to the prince's twisted cravings and depravities. What started as youthful terror slowly hardened into numbness, then eventually contempt towards her gilded cage's confines. She watched with icy detachment as the decades transformed Vukasin into a grotesque, withered relic mired in his own excess.

Olinka herself, however, emerged from the harem's depths a razor-edged predator. No longer the naïve girl, she applied herself to mastering the skills of politics, courtly deception, even poisons and dagger-craft when the palace eunuchs weren't watching. Her greatest assets remained her stunning looks and talent for intimacy, both employed expertly in extracting pillow-talk secretes from her regaled but aged suitors.

These both sustain and disgust her in equal measure. For beneath the boredom lurks something darker still – a hunger for freedom, by any means necessary. Her growing web of pawns and informants within the court's ranks fortify Olinka's ambitions daily. She fully intends to leverage her tres against the corrupt royals soon enough, no matter how much blood up coats her soft, pale hands.

The great ires of the age began with a single spark of female fury. Olinka may ignite the whole of Khazar in those same unholy flames before her vengeful ambitions are sated at long last. The court had best beware the machinations of one blessed with perfect beauty yet cursed to fleetingly revel in it from the shadows of power.