Indeed, little was left of the once-vast river of gold that flowed into the eternal city. Oblivious to the evidence of grandeur all around them, they fought viciously among themselves for what wealth remained. The inhabitants, descendants of a race of conquerors, lived like rats squabbling and polluting the ruins of an abandoned palace. But the great city is not now what it once was: Regeane didn’t know what she’d expected of the once-proud mistress of the world when she’d come to Rome. Her intricate plot and hypnotic voice will cast a spell that few will be able to resist.Alice Borchardt’s The Silver Wolf is set in Rome in the time of the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne, the latter half of the eighth century AD. Lyrical, fast-paced, sensual, and rich with historical detail and deep insights into the heart, The Silver Wolf catapults Alice Borchardt squarely into the front rank of contemporary women writers. Now, as an infamous stranger prepares to claim his bride, deadly plots and counter plots tighten like a noose around her neck, Regeane must fight to live with dignity as the proud creature she is: civilized and savage, woman and wolf, partaking of both yet infinitely more than either. Outside the gates of Rome, baying on the moonlit expanses of the Campagna, there is a mysterious dark wolf whose scent makes the animal in Regeane tremble with desire.
Yet Regeane finds allies as well: Lucilla, rumored to be the private courtesan of Pope Hadrian himself Antonius, a wise and gentle soul trapped within a body grotesquely disfigured by disease and the little Saxon girl Elfgifa, brave beyond her years, with a tongue as sharp as a blade.
And if the Church discovers her secret, Regeane will burn at the stake.
The most notorious, her depraved uncle and guardian, will not scruple to betray her to the Church unless she aids him in his sinister schemes. Possessed of preternatural agility and strength, primal memories extending back thousands of years, and senses so keen they can pierce the veil of death itself, Regeane is a shapeshifter: woman and wolf, hunter and hunted.īetrothed by Charlemagne's command to a barbarian lord she has never seen, Regeane is surrounded by enemies. But unknown to those plotting against her, the blood she has inherited from her murdered father makes her much more than a child of royalty. Regeane's regal blood renders her an unwilling pawn in the struggle for political power. Now, into the Eternal City comes Regeane, a beautiful young woman distantly related, through her dead mother, to Charlemagne. In this new historical romantic fantasy of stunning originality and scope, Alice Borchardt breathes life into a bygone age, brilliantly recreating a sensuous, violent world-and the men and women whose grand ambitions, betrayals, and passions shape the era in which they live and die.ĭecadent Rome at the dawn of the Dark Ages is mired in crumbling grandeur.
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