Barbara Blomberg sings for emperors and kings, but when her voice captures Charles V, the most powerful ruler in Christendom, she enters a game where the stakes are her heart and her life. A singer of uncommon beauty and talent, Barbara arrives at the Imperial Court expecting nothing more than professional triumph. Instead, she finds herself entangled with a monarch whose empire spans continents and whose enemies surround them both. As intimacy blooms between the emperor and this remarkable commoner, the court watches with predator-like attention: the Bishop of Arras, the almoner Pedro de Soto, and countless others who would use Barbara's vulnerability as a weapon. What begins as a passionate affair becomes a treacherousnavigation of political pressure, religious intrigue, and the impossible choice between love and survival. Georg Ebers, the master of Victorian historical fiction, renders sixteenth-century Vienna with devastating intimacy, capturing the moment when a woman's voice becomes her greatest gift and her most dangerous liability.
