A centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born in this sweeping epic fantasy that’s perfect for fans of Robin Hobb and Circe . Five hundred years of peace between queendoms shatters when girls inexplicably stop being born. As the Drought of Girls stretches across a generation, it sets off a cascade of political and personal consequences across all five queendoms of the known world, throwing long-standing alliances into disarray as each queendom begins to turn on each other—and new threats to each nation rise from within. Uniting the stories of women from across the queendoms, this propulsive, gripping epic fantasy follows a warrior queen who must rise from childbirth bed to fight for her life and her throne, a healer in hiding desperate to protect the secret of her daughter’s explosive power, a queen whose desperation to retain control leads her to risk using the darkest magic, a near-immortal sorcerer demigod powerful enough to remake the world for her own ends—and the generation of lastborn girls, the ones born just before the Drought, who must bear the hopes and traditions of their nations if the queendoms are to survive. "An intoxicating brew of court politics, deadly magic, family rivalry, and enough swashbuckling female swordplay to delight Wonder Woman 's entire isle of Amazons. Macallister's turn from historical fiction to historical fantasy is a gem--I can't wait for the next installment!" --Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network "Ambitious and engaging... A sprawling epic fantasy that spans the lives of warriors, queens and the fate of a continent."--Rebecca Roanhorse, New York Times bestselling author Black Sun G.R. Macallister, author of the Five Queendoms series, beginning with Scorpica , and also writes bestselling historical fiction under the name Greer Macallister. Her novels have been optioned for film and television. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books , she lives with her family in Washington, DC. Chapter 1: The Barren Queen CHAPTER 1 THE BARREN QUEEN Midsummer, the All-Mother’s Year 501 In the Holy City, Sestia Khara On the eve of the Sun Rites, Khara dha Ellimi awoke alone in the jet-black dark. Despite the too-soft, too-large beds their Sestian hosts had set aside for her delegation, she’d fallen asleep quickly enough, soothed by the nearness of her fellow Scorpicae. The steady, measured breathing of a dozen warrior women at rest had been her lullaby. Yet she awoke to find silence her only companion. Soft, rumpled beds all around her lay abandoned. Khara knew, of course, what her warriors had gone to do. She’d done it herself nine years running, in this very city, years ago. At ten-and-five she’d made her first journey to Sestia to celebrate rites. She’d returned to Scorpica with a belly set to swell, as did so many warrior sisters, their seed watered with a man’s rain. The annual Moon Rites or rarer Sun Rites, in this sense they differed little: the Sestian priests, the Xaras, encouraged pleasures for all. Pleasures honored the God of Plenty and Her consort, they said. The warriors of Scorpica, hard-edged and lean with muscle, their dark hair shorn nearly to their scalps, laughed behind their hands at the long-haired priests’ solemn piety. Some warriors believed in the God of Plenty and some did not. They pursued pleasure for pleasure’s sake, not for Hers. Khara felt as if the thick mattress were trying to swallow her slowly, like a fangless snake. She struggled upward and almost fell from the raised bed, not used to a perch so high. Scorpion mokh these pilgrimages, she thought. Next time I’ll stay home. But by the next Sun Rites, five years from now, would she still be queen? By then she’d be nearing her fortieth year. It would be foolhardy not to consider passing the crown, though she had no daughter to receive it. So she had surveyed all her subjects, analyzed their strengths and weaknesses, planned for succession as she would for any campaign, and chosen as her protégée Mada dha Shodrei. Who had, like the others, vanished into the Sestian night. Once steadied, Khara paced the dark room, her bare feet landing soundlessly on the cool stone floor. During the Sun Rites, the enormous, gleaming-white central building of the Holy City—both palace and temple—housed dozens, even hundreds, of visitors. Warriors could have their pick. Khara knew that some Scorpicae were strategic in their pleasures, choosing to bed particular men for their strength or intelligence, for traits they wanted in the next generation of warriors. She herself had never been so deliberate. But she suspected Mada would be. Her keen strategic mind was one of the chief reasons Khara had chosen her. The other reason she’d chosen Mada was her daughter. Tamura dha Mada was ten years old and already deadly with a bow, toting a swaying brace of red squirr