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

by Shelley Parker-Chan

Startled, Zhu remembered the desperate, animal need to survive that had driven her to claim Zhu Chongba’s life. Even now she could feel it inside her. She had never before connected it to the desire that was the subject of the Dharma Master’s lectures. For a moment she felt the burn of that old coal of resentment. It didn’t seem fair that while others earned their suffering for pleasure, she should earn hers for nothing more than wanting to live.

With alarm she realized it was a new desire, already rooted alongside that other desire that defined everything she was and did. It felt as dangerous as an arrowhead lodged in her body, as though at any moment it might work its way in deeper and cause some fatal injury.

Gay panic!

Ouyang’s emotions nearly choked him: revulsion and scorn and jealousy, so tangled that he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Beneath it all was a piercing yearning. He had no idea if it was a yearning for or a yearning to be, and the equal impossibility of each of those hurt beyond belief.

This is exactly what it feels like to find out you’re queer.