Eyes of Kings

Book : Flesh & False Gods

by Chloe Gong

Genres: Fantasy action & adventure; Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

“The only thing hotter than a character written by Chloe Gong is a betrayal written by Chloe Gong.” —Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

The action-packed finale to Chloe Gong’s New York Times bestselling Flesh & False Gods trilogy—inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra—brings readers the ultimate showdown for power among gods and men.

War beckons in the kingdom of Talin. On one side sits Calla Tuoleimi and Anton Makusa, and on the other, the recently dethroned August Shenzhi and Calla's own predecessor Sinoa Tuoleimi. Neither will rest until the opposition is buried.

Calla assumed victory would be easy. She wears the divine crown after a violent coup, wielding the most powerful weapon in the kingdom. Then the provinces start to whisper of the old gods returning to earth, and suddenly the game board is flipped upside-down.

Anton thought he aligned himself with victory. When he swore to serve as Calla’s general, he understood the battle they were waging. But he fears Calla is no longer herself with the crown. Rather, he fears that Calla is returning to who she once was.

August would sacrifice anything for victory. He has waited his entire life for the throne, and surrender is not an option. In the face of age-old immortals challenging his terrain and the possibility of betrayal from his closest and most cherished guard, he must be careful who he trusts.

Because when the war ends, there can only be one king.

Release date: August 4, 2026

Publisher: S&S/Saga Press

Print pages: 384

Sample

Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1
NOW

It started out of nowhere, suddenly and relentlessly, pouring from the heavens. An hour after the coup, the kingdom was awash with rain, its downpour concentrated over San-Er most heavily. Before the Crescent Societies had finished installing its people, the Rubi Waterway rose too high to bear, flooding the streets, pouring downstream and off the cliffs, into the sea. It was pandemonium.

But San-Er went on. Prizes needed to be reaped, palaces restructured. War had started, the capital its first hotbed for negotiations, and because Calla Tuoleimi wore the crown, she had opened a very limited window of time in which she could stake her claim over a kingdom that did not belong to her.

It’s been three days.

The droplets pitter-patter onto the window. Dawn breaks over the twin cities, and Calla stares blankly at the patterns tracing down the other side of the glass. She had commandeered a departed noble’s ground-floor quarters so that she could be quick if she was needed during the night. The south wing is usually better at letting in some light, but San-Er at the street level has always been a realm of darkness, even if it’s the Palace of Union. The second-, third-, fourth-floor balconies overhead crowd together to block the new day and most of the rain. Only the barest flush of blue-gray begins to crawl into Calla’s quarters, over her desk, her chair, her calloused hand splayed on the pillow.

Then her lover, his breath still deep with sleep.

Movement sounds in the hallway. Hushed voices, exchanging a new day’s instructions. Calla rises to her elbows, her silk nightshirt gliding against the sheets. The Crescent Society clerics have posted a group of their sworn members to act as Calla’s guards. For protection, they claimed. A show of support for their partnership.

She would be remiss to see their presence as anything other than a warning.

“It’s early, Princess.”

She glances over. In the dark, the lines and planes of Anton’s face—his true face, the one he was born with—are mere suggestions. The shape of his jaw, the tension in his brow. She locates each telltale mark by an innate pull.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks. She keeps her volume low, hidden under the cover of darkness too.

Anton yawns, scrubbing his face.

“I had a dream,” he mutters, “that San-Er flooded with the sea.”

When his eyes flutter open, the light in the room changes. Calla thought she was hallucinating when it first appeared. An hour after the coup, down came the rain and out poured a hazy yellow light from behind Anton’s black eyes. She turned him this way and that, trying to discern if it was a faulty bulb overhead or some trick of reflection. No one else could see it. Anton asked what was wrong, but Calla didn’t know how to answer. Tuoleimi yellow was her first thought. Why are you glowing Tuoleimi yellow?

“A worrying dream,” she says. “Though unrealistic. San-Er is too high above sea level.”

Calla’s hand floats up in the dark, brushing against Anton’s jaw. It’s scratchy, unshaven in the havoc of these last few days. When he smiles, his eyes crinkle, dimming the yellow. Since its appearance, she’s discovered something even stranger. Without really trying, she can pull from it. She focuses—a small, restrained breath to fill her lungs—and Anton leans toward her. He reacts the same way each time, as though by compulsion, and he’s yet to notice that Calla is responsible. The light dulls, sapped from its post behind his eyes. A pleasant tickle starts in Calla’s throat.

“Not the rest of Talin, though,” Anton says. His head droops into the dome of her palm. “Not Kelitu.”

Calla doesn’t pull for long. She breathes out, releasing her hold, and Anton responds by rolling away indolently. The light always comes back, in any case. It depends on how much she takes. The first time was an accident. She had breathed him in, and the crown on her head started to throb. His glow dimmed. Calla stopped, alarmed. After a few minutes, with Anton none the wiser, the yellow light was churning at full radiance again.

The next time, it was several hours. Calla had wanted to settle a hypothesis. She tucked her head into Anton’s shoulder while he stood surveying palace cleanup. A natural embrace; a gesture of comfort. Anton did not draw away, so Calla pulled, then pulled some more. Qi rushed into her body. So much qi. When she lifted her sleeves later, the scratches and bruises she had amassed during the coup were all healed.

“I don’t think Kelitu is flooding either,” Calla assures him.

Anton sits up. He doesn’t sense what she’s been doing to him, not then and not here. There has been no change in his manner anyway, no pallid appearance to suggest that she is taking away from his life force.

All the same, she should stop. He wouldn’t like it if he found out.

The Crescents at the door are still murmuring in conversation. For a moment, the both of them fall silent to listen, catching snippets about a patrol and the wall. Calla hasn’t been able to shake the Crescent Societies from watching her every move, monitoring what she does and who she talks to. San-Er has experienced violent upheaval. Calla Tuoleimi didn’t win the twin cities herself: she marched in after the Crescents already succeeded with their takeover. They want her to remember that.

But before the Crescent Societies can prove themselves lawmakers and leaders, they are criminals and cultists. Too much change is anathema… There will be wide revolt without Calla at the helm, without a visual and symbolic promise that San-Er’s factories shall continue to run, that coin continue to flow, that the millions living in this swell-tide of a capital continue to receive what they were promised as city dwellers. The Crescent Societies are unable to forget that.

“Today,” she decides, “we need to get rid of August.”

Anton is silent. He has his back to her now, so Calla cannot read his expression. Erratic rain strikes the window. She skates her hand along his bare spine—a soft touch, a reminder. He is warm.

“Is that wise?” he finally asks.

“You tell me,” Calla replies. “You’re my only general.”

“We have had very little time to plan. We would be going out with nothing but brute force.”

They have already waited longer than Calla wanted. It was a necessary interim to restore order to the capital, yes. The vaults were pried wide open. Employees who formerly worked under the Weisannas were paid a lump sum to stay put. Hands in the kitchen, eyes in the surveillance room. It was at Anton’s insistence—they needed a regiment keeping house, lest they returned after war was won and realized the capital had crumbled not from invasion but from sheer ineptitude. Water in the walls, water in the carpets.

The palace resumes operation and the shops open. The Crescent Societies have installed their people everywhere there used to be palace guards. Finally, at this point in time, a triage of the kingdom would focus not on the capital but on the tumor looming outside it, in the shape of August Shenzhi.

“We need nothing more than brute force,” Calla says. Her power thrums from the assertion. Starting from her crown, surging through her bones, spreading in her limbs. Anton turns around, his eyes still aglow, and she laces her hands together to prevent taking more.

“Eigi Province is too open,” Anton warns. “August’s camp could hear us coming and initiate evacuation. They have multiple routes out.”

“He won’t flee. If he has not yet moved from Eigi, he wants a confrontation.”

“Yes,” Anton says. “And isn’t that strange? He must know that he has no defense against the crown. Why stay put?”

Calla has mulled over the same question. In these few days, she expected to hear news of him fleeing north. If she were in August’s shoes, she would get away from the capital. He lost San-Er: that much is undeniable. But the provinces are open for the taking. Most councilmembers are dead. The generals will serve whoever can pay, and August is heir to King Kasa’s legacy. He ought to move fast and secure a fringe province before Calla has time to convince its yamen otherwise. Settle for the demotion and rule in Gaiyu Province or someplace alike. Calla spared him his life when he surrendered. He should be so grateful.

So why is he still there?

A low creak, by the door. The Crescents are leaning against it attempting to eavesdrop, and Calla’s hackles rise in retaliation.

“I want at least a hundred of them,” she whispers, her volume dropping lower. “And weapons. They’re already distributing weapons across the twin cities, so I know they have them.”

The crown is powerful. But she still needs the shape of an army. She needs soldiers who can clear the path, or else Calla will tire herself out on the collateral that August inevitably positions in front of her. Every Weisanna in San-Er has fled to join August’s camp. He will have hundreds of soldiers. The Crescent Societies are not trained to fight against them, yet they are her only option. Calla has no time to run recruitment.

“Bibi can make the request,” Anton whispers in return. “But this early—”

“Anton,” she interrupts. “We can’t wait. You wanted this. You asked for this.”

Calla only took up this mantle to get rid of August. What else could she have done? Eigi had been the end of the line. Despite every move Calla and Anton had played in the palace, the die was cast and August won. He’d had them hostage—at best, they would have been killed, and at worst, they would have been exiled into a miserable life with no legacy, no possessions. It was accepting that fate or it was waging war with everything Calla had.

A knock on the door.

“Your Highness,” one of the Crescents calls. “Are you awake? Can we be of any help?”

“I’m trying to say,” Anton whispers, “let me think on it. I can figure out a way to position it so that they’re not bristling to get rid of you.”

“It doesn’t matter how much they’re bristling to get rid of me,” Calla counters. Back and forth they take the cadence of lovers, disguising this talk of war as sweet nothings. “They couldn’t have taken San-Er if I hadn’t challenged August in tandem. They can’t turn against me until he’s gone.”

“So why are you trying to speed it along? August’s influence stretches far. You’ll need allies to get rid of the Weisannas and every palace-led chain of command across Talin too. There is an endless amount of work beyond capturing August.”

“Highness?” The next knock is louder, because the Crescents have heard Calla and Anton murmuring. The Crescents are worried that Calla will turn on them before they’re ready. If the clerics didn’t need to maintain some semblance of respect, they might have tried stationing their people inside the room when Calla and Anton disappeared for rest.

“The Crescent Societies are only good for combating August. They will be too difficult afterward,” she says. “I have the crown, Anton. Once August is out of our way, we’ll focus on the kingdom without Crescent Society nonsense.”

Anton shakes his head. “You promised to free the provinces from the throne,” he reminds her. As though there is any chance she has forgotten. As though she might want to break her oath. “You’ll need to raise your flags beyond San-Er’s wall, across the Jinzi River, then into the north. You’ll have to come to an agreement with every province yamen and secure the flow of their resources into San-Er. That’s when this coup ends, and not a moment sooner.”

“Yes.”

“Calla,” Anton says, “you are not taking this seriously.”

Calla kicks the sheets off herself. If she can help it, she tries not to replay the events of the coup. She’s been kept busy enough. But there will be a lull during their cleanup, during their scramble to restore the capital, and Calla remembers the spectators screaming when she slit the Weisannas’ throats. How close she had been to killing August then and there, but it had felt cheap, it had felt unnecessary. She does not want to regret that decision.

The longer that August hovers outside the capital, the more she does.

“How am I not taking this seriously?” she asks.

“The Crescents are all we have. You have to play their game.”

“I’m getting up.”

Calla throws one leg off the side of the bed, meaning to stand, but Anton grabs her other knee. His palm sears into her skin, each crease and divot palpable, each pinprick of contact a new channel of qi that Calla could pull from him.

“For instance, while they’re knocking on the door,” he whispers, “you should not be getting up.”

New voices have joined the conversation outside. More guards, all to report to their different clerics every maneuver that Calla Tuoleimi and Anton Makusa are planning.

“We’re not going to get away with pretending we weren’t muttering and plotting in here,” Calla returns. “It’s fine.”

Anton, in response, slides his hand up to her thigh and tugs her toward him. It is such a sudden, startling act that Calla doesn’t resist, her head hitting the pillow again. She raises her brow.

“Despite all that you’ve achieved”—his fingers tighten, slowly moving her leg, pushing one apart from the other—“you are actually a very poor performer.”

Calla can’t help her laugh. One sharp sound. “Really?”

“You are too used to being better than everyone else. Wanting more than everyone else and surpassing them that way. You don’t know how to deflect instead.”

Anton doesn’t give her a chance to protest. He pushes up the silk of her nightshirt. His mouth lands between her legs. The pressure is immediate—deep, volatile. Calla’s head tips back into the pillow, and entirely as he intended, she doesn’t hold in her profane moan. His fingers dig into either side of her legs held astride, and her hand comes up too, sinking into his hair for some attempt at managing his hunger.

The hallway has turned dead silent. A golden mist dances into the room. Its sheen casts the ridges of her knuckles into definition, serrated and bright while her fingers are spread wide, clawing for control.

It looks, almost, like its own sort of crown, set upon Anton’s head.