If I''d never hoped to live in a world of goodness and truth—if the priestess of Diana, then Leander, and Joanna, hadn''t shown me glimpses of it—maybe I wouldn''t have minded being shut out of it. Maybe the preacher''s death wouldn''t have trapped me in a dungeon, the dungeon of my own self.

Her name is Salome. You may think you know her story—how her seductive Dance of the Seven Veils led to the beheading of John the Baptist. But you don''t know it from her side. You don''t know how a web of betrayal, and greed, and desire was spun around an innocent teenage girl. How she came to doubt her own mother. How she searched for a friend in an unfamiliar land. And how she walked into a trap that changed the course of history.

This is Salome''s story, in her own words. Listen, and learn of strength, of power, of loyalty—and of death.

From the Hardcover edition.