More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“We’ve lost so much already, and this coup isn’t yet really begun. But that’s how it goes, isn’t it? Removing a despot from power comes at a cost. I just didn’t particularly want to pay it.”
A child should not be a chain, used to yoke a woman like cattle to a role, a purpose, a life she would not have chosen for herself. And yet she felt then, with an aching resentment, how Vikram would use their child to reduce and erase her. She hated him for that, for stealing the quiet and strange intimacy of her and her own flesh and blood and making it a weapon.
It shamed her, all the things she dreamt of doing to Chandra, but only because of how much pleasure the thought of his suffering brought her. He deserved to suffer. But to enjoy the thought of his pain made her more like him than she wanted to be. “I think you may be a good person after all,” Priya said slowly.
Her hand at her side, visible to Priya, who was still held frozen at the point of a knife, twitched a little. It was a small motion, but one Priya had learned early on as a maidservant, back when there’d still been hope she’d develop the fine manners and demureness to serve at feasts and functions, at the beck and call of highborn women. The gesture meant, Watch me. You may soon be needed.
