She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1)

by Shelley Parker-Chan

nothing was the most terrifying thing she could think of—worse even than the fear of hunger, or pain, or any other suffering that could possibly arise from life. She reached

she wasn’t sure suffering could be shared, even with one’s friends. Watching her father and brother die, digging their graves, kneeling for four days in front of the monastery: all of them had been acts of exquisite aloneness. She knew that when it came down to it, you survived and died alone. But perhaps there was still a comfort in having someone at your side while it happened. “Took you long enough!” Prefect Fang said when Zhu and Xu Da came into the bathhouse. He and the two other department heads had already shucked their robes and were perched on the side of the sunken

while others earned their suffering for pleasure, she should earn hers for nothing more than wanting to live.

Denying desire only made yourself vulnerable to those who were smart enough to see what you couldn’t even acknowledge to yourself.