The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)

by Tasha Suri

“I’ve avoided marriage. I’ll never willingly beget children with a man. And what is more monstrous than that? To be inherently, by your nature, unable to serve your purpose? To want, simply because you want, to love simply for the sake of love?”

Why would you want me? Why would you follow me into the water, and hold my heart and speak to me in a voice like that, like you’re yearning for me?

The moment I saw you, I felt a tug. You are the feeling of falling, the tidal waters, the way a living thing will always turn, seeking light. It isn’t that I think you are good or kind, or even that I love you. It is only that, the moment I saw you, I knew I would seek you out. Just as I sought the deathless waters. Just as I sought my brother. Just as I seek all things—without thought, with nothing but want.

“She was an old woman who was dying anyway. And you’re not afraid of killing. I should have expected it. And I shouldn’t care.” Priya’s throat felt thick. It was hard to force the words out. “And I wish I could say that I don’t know why you’re like this—why you always gut the heart out of me, over and over—but I know why. I lived through our childhood too.” She looked away from him.

But first, she thought quietly, savagely, to herself, as the men around her kneeled and shouted her name. Malini. Malini. Mother Malini. Empress Malini. I am going to find my emperor brother. I am going to make Chandra kneel before his peers, humiliated and broken. And I am going to watch him burn.