The Empire Is Mine

She helped hold an empire together. Now she must reckon with what it cost.

Seventeen years after the death of Tsar Dušan, the woman who once ruled beside him lives far from the court she helped preserve.

Jelena, now a nun known as Jelisaveta, begins writing a letter to Nikodim, a monk who once investigated her husband's mysterious death.

As she looks back on the final days of Dušan's life and the years that followed, she recounts the choices she made as an empress, a widow, and a mother. Some were necessary. Others came at a terrible cost. And some she has spent seventeen years trying to explain to herself.

In a world of shifting loyalties, political ambition, and fragile alliances, the fate of an empire can depend on a single decision — or a single truth left unspoken.

Told through the intimate, unsparing voice of a woman who understood power better than most of the men around her, The Empire Is Mine is a historical novel about duty, guilt, motherhood, and the price of holding on to what is already slipping away.

A note for readers: The Empire Is Mine can be read as a standalone novel. However, reading The Tsar Is Dead (Book One) first is recommended for a fuller understanding of the characters, events, and connections between the two stories.