Sabaa Tahir’s Heir worked its magic on all of us. After absolutely dazzling us with her An Ember in the Ashes series, we can’t help but be mesmerized with this new duology that not only amped up all the emotions, but also brought Sabaa to brand new heights. Unfortunately for us, a duology means that the end is almost here as the countdown to book two comes to it’s final part. Luckily for us, there’s still plenty of surprises left before we see how it all goes down.
Cosmopolitan has an exclusive first look at Empire by Sabaa Tahir, which is set to be released on September 22, 2026. The novel brings us back to the Martial Empire as Quil, Sirsha, Aiz, and Cero continue to fight for love, power, and survival as everything officially comes to a head. With the gods and dark pasts chasing them all, will they make it out unscathed? Here’s some more info from our friends at G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers:
The gripping conclusion to the action-packed, ruthless, and romantic fantasy duology that began with HEIR, from the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author Sabaa Tahir.A falling empire.An ancient evil.A lost homeland.A lie that could destroy the world.
In the crumbling Martial Empire, crown prince Quil Farrar and his aunt, Empress Helene, are losing a war against the vicious Kegari horde. Quil’s armies dwindle, his faith falters, and the woman he loves vanished months ago, leaving him brokenhearted. Torn between his duty to his people and his desire to discover Sirsha’s fate, Quil embarks on a dangerous quest for aid—from the most treacherous of allies.
Sirsha Westering finds herself tethered to Div, an ancient evil unleashed by a terrible tragedy. Div delights in tormenting Sirsha, hungering for her magical heart. Even as Sirsha struggles for control of her own fate, she is desperate to shield Quil from Div’s destructive power. But Div won’t release Sirsha without a fight. To earn her freedom, Sirsha must uncover Div’s past—and face horrors in her own.
Cero bet-Dafra, former right hand of the Kegari leader, Aiz, now finds himself pitted against her. As Aiz slips further into violence and delusion, Cero must discover if his people have any hope of a future or if they’re condemned to an unending cycle of violence. His journey will force him to confront hidden truths, ancient secrets, and a lie that could destroy the world.
In Empire, #1 New York Times bestselling author Sabaa Tahir returns to the expansive world of fury and vengeance of Heir, weaving a story of legacy and rebellion, loyalty and freedom, and what it means to confront the monsters that lurk within us all.
Before we all head back, we’re getting a chance to catch up with Quil and see how he’s doing after Sirsha disappeared. Check out an exclusive excerpt below! Just make sure to pre-order Empire so you can find out what happens next as soon as it comes out!
2
Quil
Quil Farrar had missed many things about the Empire. The raucous markets and warm summers. The majestic architecture and wealth of sculptures and murals.
But he did not miss the regular stream of people trying to kill him.
Though, to be fair, the raider who currently had Quil in a headlock didn’t appear to have specifically targeted him. Nighttime in the Serran Mountain Range was stygian, and Quil’s face was covered. The man was a scavenger, hunting the mountains for easy pickings along with the other members of his raiding party. He likely had no idea that it was the crown prince of the Empire he was attempting to choke to death.
Fortunately, this killer wasn’t very skilled. The ale he stank of might have had something to do with that. A vicious elbow to the groin loosened the raider’s grip. Quil ducked away, drew his scim, and would have shoved it in the man’s back.
If his magic hadn’t flared.
An image passed through Quil’s mind: the raider, crouched at a river side next to a boy with the same wild blond hair as him. His son, perhaps, or younger brother.
The raider’s gentle expression in the memory was so incongruous with the grimace of rage he wore now that Quil paused, leaving himself open to a staggering punch to the jaw. Stupid!
Quil didn’t bleeding have time for a fistfight with a barbarian brute. By now, he was meant to be at a Kegari base farther up the mountain, sabotaging his
enemies while his companions destroyed a field full of ordnance.
The next time the man threw a punch, Quil sidestepped and tore his scim across his belly. The raider groaned and collapsed, dead.
“You hesitated,” a voice said. Aunt Hel, in black fatigues and dented armor, her scim unsheathed and gleaming with blood in the strange pink moonlight. As ever, her crown braid was impeccable.
“My magic. Wasn’t expecting it,” Quil said. Seeing memories, whether by touching an object or looking into someone, struck Quil as forbidden. A violation of sorts.
“You must use it if you wish to control it, Quil,” she said. “Magic doesn’t like to be chained.”
The words were an eerie echo of Quil’s dreams of late, in which he often found himself in a dark, circular cave with his young friend Ruhyan Veturius,
murdered nearly two years ago now.
Help me, Quil. Use your magic, Ruh would say in the dreams. Chaining it is against its nature.
The same whisper to Quil night after night, a haunting he couldn’t shake.
He forced the dreams—and the magic—from his mind, peering into the shadows around him for other threats. Beside him, Aunt Hel knelt, wiping her scim on the dead man’s clothes.
“Another vulture,” she said of the man. “Picking at what’s left of us.”
Aunt Hel spoke without bitterness. Her cold practicality was armor and shield and second skin. Her affect used to frustrate Quil. Now it was a comfort because it still existed in this world. She was here. And beneath her cool exterior, her hatred of the Kegari and her wrath at their destruction of the Empire burned as hot as his own.
“Quil, Empress.” Tas, Quil’s oldest friend, emerged from the blue pines surrounding them, followed by three Empire legionnaires. “Sufiyan and Elias took out the last of the raiders, but the Kegari base isn’t far. The sky-rats will send someone to investigate. Let’s move.”
They ran swiftly after Tas, for their failure would be a catastrophe. In the city of Serra, which Quil and Aunt Hel had managed to wrest back from Kegari control only two months earlier, a hidden Imperial smithy held the key to defeating their enemy for good: Ikfa, a rare and notoriously finicky metal that could neutralize Kegari magic.
And a few days ago, Spiro Teluman, the Empire’s greatest blacksmith, had figured out the secret to working it.
I only need time, my prince, he’d told Quil. A few weeks and we’ll have weapons to counter Kegari magic and their accursed aircraft.
Spiro’s confidence awakened the first stirrings of hope in Quil since the war began, but within a few hours of Spiro’s news, Musa of Adisa had sent a message. Musa, the former ambassador of Marinn, was Aunt Hel’s spymaster now. One of his sources warned of a Kegari air base high up in the Serran Range. It was packed with ordnance and perfectly positioned to wipe the secret smithy—and the rest of the city of Serra—off the map.
As the terrain grew steeper, their progress slowed. Sufiyan and his father, Elias, appeared out of the woods. Elias murmured a greeting. Quil tried to hide his glower. He had little to say to the big man.
Sufiyan, meanwhile, handed Quil a small pot. “That’s going to be a heinous bruise.” He nodded to Quil’s jaw, wincing. “Put this on it tonight. Will keep you from looking even uglier than normal.”
“You’re very solicitous,” Quil said. “Might this have anything to do with Arelia’s threat?”
“That she’d put sand vipers in my laundry if I didn’t bring you back in one piece? Possibly.” A long pause. “How would she even catch them?”
“Knowing her, she already has.” Quil grinned. “Better hope nothing happens to me up there.”
Ahead of them, Tas stopped, gesturing above. Their path led them near the ruins of an old fort, through open terrain. But a fleet of six Kegari Sails flew overhead, no doubt looking for whoever had laid waste to the raiders.
Quil tapped his boot impatiently as they waited. Those odious Sails. The sky-rats had used them to decimate Navium, Silas, Sadh, and Nur. Tens of thousands of Empire citizens were dead. Millions had fled to the few safe havens—the Bhuth badlands, Estium, Delphinium, and Tiborum—all of which were overcrowded and running low on food and supplies. The southern settlements now crawled with pirates. The countryside was infested with Karkaun raiding parties.
The Empire was on its knees because of those Sails. And with the resurrection of the Kegari leader Aiz bet-Dafra, their enemy had only grown bolder while the Empire flailed.
She shouldn’t be alive. Quil watched Sufiyan stab Aiz again and again. No one could survive that. And yet Aiz had. Quil first worried that perhaps Div, the creature who had given Aiz her power, had survived too.
But when Elias hired Sirsha to kill Div, their deal created an oath coin. Elias’s oath coin had disappeared from the chain around his neck, which meant the oath was fulfilled. Div was dead.
But Sirsha . . .
Quil grasped at the coin he wore at his own throat. It was an Adah coin, a physical manifestation of their bond. For Adah meant soul half; that’s what Sirsha was to Quil.
Other than the hairpins he’d nicked from her, the coin was the only connection he had to Sirsha. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead or worse. When he touched the coin, all he felt was a weighty chill.
“Move,” Tas said, for the Sails had passed. “Go—quickly now.”
A flower moon flared through heavy clouds as they passed the fort, giving the stones an ethereal appearance, hiding the worst of the rot and decay. As Quil eyed it, a shiver crept up his back, as if he were being watched. But when he scanned the woods behind him, they were empty.
“Nephew.” Aunt Hel dropped back to jog beside Quil. Her scent washed over him, crisp like a winter morning.
“Are you all right to pair up with Elias for the mission?” Aunt Hel said.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
The Empress snorted. “Perhaps because every time you look at him, I think his skin is going to peel off. Not that I blame you. I’ve certainly wanted to punch Elias a time or two—”
“Or ten.” Quil offered.
“Or twenty,” Aunt Hel said. “You’ve a right to be angry, from what you’ve told me. But I do think you should talk.”
“By talk, do you mean grab a scim and sort it out on a field?”
Aunt Hel glanced at him askance. “Of course,” she said. “You didn’t think I meant . . .” She gestured vaguely at Quil’s face. “Speaking with mouths? What good would that do?”
She smiled, a rare enough sight that Quil found himself smiling back. Her pale blue eyes met his, and there was an openness within that he last remembered from childhood. A softness that was a gift, for she showed it to so few.
Her gaze fell to the Adah coin at his throat, and her face grew sad. “Anything?”
“No,” Quil said. He’d wondered if Aunt Hel would judge him for falling in love with Sirsha—especially when his first love, Aiz bet-Dafra, had ended up being a two-faced, murderous snake.
But when he told Aunt Hel that Sirsha had disappeared after defeating Div, she’d taken his hands, stricken. Oh, Quil, she’d said. Oh no.
Quil could almost see Sirsha. Smell her. Feel her palms on his chest, the burn of her regard, the secrets behind her smiles. He could hear the many shades of her laugh, low and mocking, high and joyous.
Just days ago, he’d called out to her. Sirsha. The coin had warmed, a barely perceptible heat, and he heard a voice. Her voice.
Quil.
His heart had leapt. But he’d been imagining things.
Now there was only the trail before him. Distantly, thunder rumbled. The moon faded as rain clouds overtook the sky.
“I wish I knew if she lived,” he said to Aunt Hel, turning the coin over in his fingers, the finely etched lines catching on his calluses.
“Have hope,” Aunt Hel said. “Sirsha is a survivor. Your paths have diverged, but it might not be forever.” Aunt Hel met his gaze, her own hard and sober. The Empress once more. “Focus on the now, Quil. Millions of lives depend on our success.”
“Sst.” Tas silenced them, and the group crouched in a stand of pines, watching an immense Battle Sail pass above the treetops, its metal fletching catching the fading moonlight.
“We’ll meet you at the waypoint,” Tas said. “Try not to die.” He, Sufiyan, and the three legionnaires disappeared into the forest as thunder rumbled again and lightning flashed. A slow drizzle descended.
Quil groaned. He knew the Serran Range well, having grown up fishing its clear green rivers and hunting along its rocky spires. The storms were as swift and vicious as a jackal’s temper. In a quarter hour, their clothing would be soaked through.
After Aunt Hel nodded her goodbye and faded into the rain, Quil looked sidelong at Elias. The big man shifted his stance.
“Quil,” Elias began. “I know you’re angr—”
“Let’s go.”
Surprise and hurt mingled on Elias’s face. Good, Quil thought.
He wanted to believe that Elias didn’t understand the cruelty of what he’d asked of Sirsha. That he didn’t realize the binding oath would force her to hunt for Ruh’s killer at the expense of all else. But Elias was widely read and traveled. He must have known.
Quil never would have imagined Elias being quite so mercenary. But then, Ruh’s death had changed them all. Elias, Aunt Hel, Sufiyan, Karinna—Quil himself. Even Laia told no tales.
Everything awful seemed to stem from Ruh’s death. As if in the grand web of all that was meant to be, some essential strand had been cut.
Make it right, Quil thought sternly to himself. Save your people. He and Elias were meant to sabotage the Sails so the Kegari couldn’t come after them when the ordnance exploded. Get to it.
Even through the increasingly heavy rain, the wind carried the smells of an army encampment. Quil grimaced at the stench of refuse and poorly dug latrines and tightened his face scarf.
With Elias leading, they skirted a low fence shoddily constructed with timber from the forest. The Kegari had set a watch, but it was clear that they were counting on the location of the camp—in a long meadow high in the Serran Range—to protect them. Quil and Elias took out four guards silently and jumped the fence.
Thank the skies the Kegari airfield was close to the tree line. Within minutes, they had sliced through ropes and reed and canvas. It wouldn’t permanently damage the Sails. They didn’t have time for that. But it would make them impossible to fly in the aftermath of the explosion.
The rain fell heavier, and they almost missed the low hoot of a tawny owl: Aunt Hel, giving them a warning.
Time to go, Elias signaled. Quil followed him to the woods, but as he did, he heard sounds, both strange and familiar.
The rasp of metal. The rise and fall of a melodic voice.
Then a coined headdress flashed in the torchlight. A woman cloaked in shadows dismissed a Kegari man and stepped into a tent not fifteen feet away.
Quil reached for his Adah coin, heart rising and sinking so fast he felt as if he were riding a storm wind. In that moment, he realized three things: The woman was a Jaduna. But she was not Sirsha. And whatever the cost, he had to find a way to speak with her.
Excerpt of Empire by Sabaa Tahir © 2026 by Sabaa Tahir.
Empire, by Sabaa Tahir will be released on September 22, 2026 from G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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