The Oleander Sword (The Burning Kingdoms, #2)

by Tasha Suri

What greater love is there than wanting to lay the world in your beloved’s hands?”

I made you a promise once. Say my name, and though it makes me a fool—and I know it does—I’ll find my way. I’ll come.

If you had simply looked outside your tent, you would have known without his assistance.

“I will not waste the lives of my allies, when they may yet be the death of my enemies.”

She would regret none of it. She could not allow herself such tenderness.

“I knew you did not slight me from a lack of respect,” she said. “I know the unnatural fire from the fort shook your faith in me. I know you simply sought to pry me gently from my throne, and set Aditya in my place.” He said nothing. “You can admit it,” she said. “Or not, as you wish. I am already sure.”

“You will see, tomorrow, that you should have kept your faith in me.”

You are like ink, Malini thought helplessly. Ink, and all I want is to make poetry of you.

“It was an amazing thing,” she said, voice low, “watching you in there with those men. You spin beautiful webs. Even when I can only see the edges of them, I have to admire them.”

“I barely understand it, the way I would willingly kneel for you, anywhere, for anything. The way I would fight for you. The way I want to be at your side. Is that what love is, Malini? Is that how awful love is? Because if it is, then I love you, the way that roots love the deep and leaves love the light. It’s—the way I am. And no matter how much I try to be good, to do right—I’m all flowers in your arms, for your war, for you—”

Words, again. Words, always cleaving distance between them.

Your gifts are you and you are your gifts, I don’t love you in pieces, I don’t separate you into parts.

“You may think you break yourself on loving me,” Malini whispered. “That it makes you bow and makes you—you serve.” A hitch, a stumble. She pressed on, still curved, her head against Priya’s throat. “But you cannot be broken by my demands. You cannot even be broken by your own. I could try and break you a thousand times, with all my weapons, with knowledge of your every weakness, and still I—” A hand tightened on Malini’s jaw. “Try,” said Priya. Malini raised her head and looked into Priya’s eyes. “Try and break me,” Priya said.

Malini had generals to meet, and an army to move—but there were flower petals scattered all over the ground, and Priya in her arms.

“Do you still want to see if I’m capable of breaking you?” Malini asked. “Do you still want me to try?”

“It was my right,” Malini said, instead of replying with the truth in its entirety—that there had been nothing pure about the fury that had led him to see her heart sisters burned; that framing a violent hatred in the flesh of faith did not make it any less brutal or monstrous. That her hurt had been far greater, and of far more worth than whatever paltry excuse for a heart lived inside him.

How lonely it was, to have power. How lonely.

I’ve dreamt of naming you my own. My heart. My wife.”

“You know nothing of true cruelty, Chandra. Perhaps one day I’ll teach you.”

“Live, then,” said Priya. “Hate me. Just live.”

If you are told your whole life that your greatest worth is as a sacrifice, inevitably there must come a day when you believe it.

I was foolish, Malini thought bitterly, as her vision began to fade, and her body waver, to ever think I could have Priya and also have this.

Hate me, Malini. Hate me and live. I can love enough for the both of us.