The Last Star of Babylon

Babylon, 539 BC

The greatest metropolis in the world rots from within while pretending to shine. King Nabonidus has fled to the desert to speak with the moon. In his absence, Belshassar rules: a young, brilliant, and deeply ill regent who holds the empire together with terror and wine, while a constant migraine reminds him that not even all the power in the world can heal what truly hurts him.

Into this nest of intrigue, incense, and betrayal comes Zohra.

She is not just another refugee. She is Ishtaya of Harran, a woman who left behind a dead fiancé, an accusation of witchcraft, and her own name. She arrives in Babylon with a stolen lyre, a voice that can calm demons, and an intelligence sharp as obsidian. Under the protection of her aunt, the ancient and fearsome Adda-Guppi, she infiltrates the court like a silent shadow.

What begins as the prince's whim —an exotic woman with a sharp tongue and eyes that don't lower— quickly transforms into a voracious obsession. Belshassar, accustomed to everything bending before him, finds himself for the first time before something he cannot buy, threaten, or break. The more Zohra resists him, the sicker and more dangerous his desire becomes.

He spies on her. He smells her clothes when she's not there. He fantasizes about locking her in a palace room just so no one else can see her. He hates her. He desires her. He needs her. And Zohra, who arrived seeking survival, discovers she holds in her hands the most powerful man in Mesopotamia… and that destroying him might be easier than she imagined.

Between them, a sick dance of power, manipulation, lust, and something that dangerously resembles love unfolds.

While Cyrus's Persians sharpen their swords outside the walls, inside the city a web of conspiracies is woven in the shadows: the ancient Adda-Guppi pulls strings that span decades, the cold priestess Ennigaldi-Nanna watches from her ziggurat, and a group of slaves and soldiers begins to speak in emesal, the sacred language Zohra turned into a code of rebellion.

In Babylon, no one is innocent.

The gods remain silent.

And a woman who should have died in Harran is about to decide the fate of the last Mesopotamian empire.

Because sometimes, the fall of a civilization doesn't begin with an army at the gates…

but with an obsessed prince and a woman who learned to smile while sharpening the knife.