A King, and No King

Bessus insists his cowardice won the battle: fleeing from his own troops, he charged straight into the enemy. King Arbaces credits fear with the victory—but his prisoner is not so easily persuaded to accept the king’s next offer.

After a triumphant war in Iberia, Arbaces offers the defeated Prince Tigranes his sister Panthea as a bride and ransom. He has not seen her since she was nine, yet already speaks of her as a marvel whose beauty can conquer where armies cannot. Tigranes refuses, and Arbaces’s pride turns the proposal into a test: can any man resist the woman he praises so extravagantly? Behind the king’s comic boasts lies a more dangerous question—what happens when the one person Arbaces cannot command is himself?

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