The Lotus Empire (The Burning Kingdoms, #3)

by Tasha Suri

“Elder Priya has the power of the yaksa,” Malini said calmly. “I was sure she would recognize me and attempt to harm me through the forest itself. I was proved correct, and it allowed me to inflict harm in return. Sometimes a calculated risk is necessary.”

When ur whole war is really just a battle between bitter exes 😔😔

If another man had been so attentive, Malini would have wondered if he’d fallen in love or lust with his prisoner. But with Rao, she was not sure such concerns were necessary. She knew where his heart lay, and it was in ashes, not in Sima’s bed.

:((((( poor Rao he’s honestly the one I’m saddest for rn :((((

He strode forward and gently clasped that face, that cold carved face fixed into a smile, and thought, I should have done this while you lived. He did not think. The drink had him, and the pipe, and the grief. It was simple enough to press his own mouth to that carved face. That ever-smiling mouth. It was cold beneath his lips. It did not warm. It never could.

HHHHH STOPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP I CAN’T TAKE THIS like I assume priya and malini will have some sort of happy ending?? but I don’t know what’s left for rao 😖😖😖

“I will go to Srugna to witness these new paths directly,” she said,

Cool everyone’s going to Srugna! I bet it’ll be totally fine!

“Sorry,” she went on. “I just wanted to say that if you felt more for him—I understand. I can listen.”

The wlw/mlm solidarity is so good!!!!

“It’s not tragic to love like we do,” Sima said gently. “To be like we are. You… you should know that.

The rain stopped abruptly.

This might be paranoid and I know they’re in a different part of the empire but is it weird that no one else has mentioned it raining at all? And where Bhumika is, Bhumika who is being haunted by ghosts with water and is drawn to a lake, it’s raining unseasonably? Maybe it’s just a metaphor

“Go then. Listen to your god. But I think you should listen to your own heart a little more, and your god a little less,” said Sima. “I’m afraid,” Rao said quietly, “that I don’t know my own heart.” “You do. You listened to it in the snow, when we almost froze. You told me what your heart said.”

When negotiations came to an end, Rao departed.

Oh wait, Alor is where Bhumika is isn’t it! Good good good

His luck was rotten. A flood had struck Alor. “Strange rains, my lord,” one of his soldiers had told him, after interrogating a lone farmer walking along the edge of the road they were traveling on.

They are strange rains aren’t they!!

Tehehe I’m very excited to get to the part of the book where all the characters meet up

Malini leapt forward and looped the necklace of gold that had been around her own throat over Priya’s neck with all the reverence of a wedding garland. Then she tightened her fist, turning the necklace into a noose.

Holding the blade to Priya’s throat. “I know you don’t need your gifts to fight,” Malini whispered. “Move, and I cut. So, my love. Will you come with me?” The only answer was yes.

THE HOMOEROTICISM OF HOLDING A BLADE TO ANOTHER WOMAN’S THROAT!!!!!

“You can love something knowing it can destroy you. Maybe you love it more for it.”

There was no other reason for sleeplessness. Certainly not Priya.

Certainly not!

I am a good liar, Malini thought. It is not my fault you see through me, as if every mask I wear is nothing but gauze, and my love for you a lamp.

“You sleep with two knives?” Priya asked, incredulous. “I sleep with three,” Malini corrected, and slashed at the arm holding her own.

“Do you believe I still want to hurt you, or do you believe I should want to?” Priya said nothing. From some reason, those words were more awful than any knife would have been.

“You remember wrongly, my lord,” Malini said. “I did not kill the priests at the lacquer gardens. They died willingly for me, to save my life. You have heard the prophecy that named me heir to Parijatdvipa. Theirs was the fire that made my crown and placed it on my brow. I do not kill priests now, but I ask them to heed the will of the mothers and the nameless god alike: They must burn.”

Also like, it would be way worse for the empire if their leader, whose only heir to the throne is a baby, were to die???????? It’s all bad but destabilizing the empire by letting the empress die would be so bad too 💀

Afterward, Malini used her own shivering magic to unwind the flowers. Used her mouth to soothe Priya’s skin.

You’re not even gonna let her return the favor?? Is Malini a top? Has Malini been a top this whole time???

And Priya—she had loved Priya. But now what she felt for Priya was something beyond love. It was the tether of magic between them. It was hatred, and it was the most joyous and sacred thing she’d ever felt. You are life, she’d told Priya, and it was true. Priya was her life.

She would choose now to be monstrous enough to let an enemy live, for the sake of keeping what was hers. She would choose love over goodness. Let future generations face the yaksa once more. Let the rot continue. Only, let me have her.

Malini!! You can’t do that!!!!

“You were never meant to be here,” Priya said. “Not for so long. Your gifts are meant to touch this world briefly, reaching mortals through fire or water, dreams or silence. Not reshape it.”

What she wanted, more than anything, was to be the woman who lay beneath all the masks. And that woman did not believe in the mothers, or empire, or the nameless god. That woman had placed her faith—her fractured, ruinous faith—in a person who’d given Malini her heart, then stolen it back, and then returned it to her once more. A woman who was gone.

He did not tell her how much he did not want to leave her; did not tell her that he loved her, and how much he’d feared losing her in the horrors of the temple, and all the horrors that came before it. The sickness on their journey to Alor. The bandits, the hunger. The roiling waters around the village. The yaksa who awakened beneath the monastery, and the fire. But he said, “Bhumika.” And she knew.

—I think it is more powerful and strange than any crown. To live without masks. To swim through rage and grief and rise, alive, on the other side.

“If you garland me,” Priya said quietly, tenderly, “I will love you and marry you. I will stay with you until time ends, and the green is no more, and there’s nothing but cold stars left.” A pause. A gentle hand grasping her pallu. “Look at me, Malini.” Malini turned and met Priya’s eyes.

“I never thought I could have her,” Priya said. “But I have her. She has me. We’re going to see the world. It may take lifetimes.”

“I’ll see you again,” Priya said. “Tell Padma to eat more, will you? Our little grandma’s too small by half. And tell Rukh—tell Rukh I’m proud of him. I always will be.” “I will,” Bhumika said weakly. And when Priya vanished, she slowly sank to her knees. Kneeling in the grass. Dappled light on her shoulders. She heard footsteps behind her. Her daughter’s silvery, light tread. Her husband’s heavier footsteps. “Bhumika,” Jeevan said, his voice low and concerned. “Are you well?” She exhaled, a smile on her mouth. Tears in her eyes. She’d wipe them away soon enough, but not yet. Not yet. “Yes,” she said. “I am.”