In this exciting sequel, disaster threatens Nico, ballot boy to the doge, as neighboring Padua launches an undeclared war. Mistrustful of diplomats and spies, the doge dispatches Nico on a secret mission to the court of King Louis of Hungary to gauge the king's resolve to aid Padua. The doge also drafts Donato Venturi, the greatest swordsman in Venice, nicknamed Black Hercules, as Nico's adviser and bodyguard. It's love at first sight for Nico, but he knows nothing about Donato, the son of a Venetian noble and a princess of Mali. Assuming Donato is straight, Nico guards his feelings until an unlikely encounter at the Prior of Brotherly Love proves otherwise. The pair steal moments together, but the war changes everything. Cutthroat political struggles with his own nobles keeps the doge busy in Venice as Nico again confronts the carnage of battle, testing his cunning. This brings him face-to-face with his nemeses, Ruggiero and Marcantonio Gradenigo,...

Venice, 1368. War hovers in the wings with the fate of the Republic at stake when the old doge dies. Fourteen-year-old Nico, a street urchin from the poorest Venetian parish, is chosen at random to tally votes in the upcoming election for a new leader. Uprooted from his old life and transplanted to the doge's palace, Nico becomes an alienated outsider at the mercy of scheming nobles. Andrea Contarini, sixtieth doge of Venice, wants the ducal throne less than Nico wants to be ballot boy. Both walk a golden tightrope over treachery and deceit. When he witnesses a court clerk burned at the stake for being gay, Nico despairs. His romantic attraction to men is as powerful as his fear of fiery death and an eternity in Hell. Taking advantage of the fraught transition in the Doge's Palace, the hostile duke of Austria pushes Trieste to rebel against Venetian domination, jeopardizing her mastery of the Adriatic Sea. The Venetian nobles split,...