The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)

by Tasha Suri

The ladies-in-waiting wore red, bloody and bridal.

As they entered the room, the watching men bowed, pressing their faces to the floor, their palms flat on the marble.

She had refused it, choosing instead to wear palest mourning white.

She stood in the court, her head unadorned and her hair wild, like a living curse.

Firelight reflected in her eyes. She looked at him with a face like a mirror: blank of feeling, reflecting nothing back at him but their shared dark eyes and serious brows.

You could make him regret that.

But whenever pain was inflicted on her—the humiliation of a blow, a man’s careless shove, a fellow servant’s cruel laughter—she felt the knowledge of how to cause equal suffering unfurl in her mind.

You’re lucky,

that I am not what I was raised to be.

Just the threat of pain can break someone.

A knife, used right, never has to draw blood.

She felt the tug of her frayed memories like a physical ache.

If not for the mothers’ sacrifice, the Age of Flowers would never have been brought to an end.

“That doesn’t mean you can’t want just a little bit more than you have,”

She wrapped her anger at Chandra around herself like new skin; as if she were a snake, sloughing off one body and making another.

She promised herself this, and sank down deep, deep.

Down into the memory of her heart sisters’ screams as they burned.

As if a choice, carefully bred into your nature by grief and training and hardship, was any choice at all.

He was best at war—the kiss of a blade against a throat held more eloquence to him than a verse—

Prem’s forehead creased with puzzlement, even as he continued to smile. It gave his expression a rather mocking edge.

“I vow to you, daughter of flowers, that every effort will be made to keep you safe as a pearl,”

I promise it, princess.”

The courtesan was dancing beautifully, every turn of her belled ankles a bright, melodious chime.

But Rao was not a better man. He was only a man with a purpose, and his work was not yet done.

Priya had sunk beneath the waters once. Only once. And she’d come out with gifts. The ability to manipulate the Hirana. The skill of slipping into the sangam.

Lady Bhumika herself sat on a divan of amethyst silk.

She didn’t like to look too closely at what sisterhood meant, a decade since their siblings had burned.

Bhumika was all falsehood: meek to the world, fire in her heart.

There were places in Ahiranya where time moved differently;

“You’re not the only one allowed to believe in things,”

“I’m allowed to want the world to be better. I’m allowed to want to help make that happen.”

The calm was an armor that she wrapped around herself, as she stood on ground laden with the dead,

The questions she did not ask were like a quiet sword at Priya’s throat.

“And what will you do if I’m not well, in the end?” Priya asked. “Nothing,” Sima said. “I could do nothing. But I’d still want to know. That’s what friends want.”

Her voice, in the semidark, was like the brush of a wing against Priya’s ear.

“We should not do what powerful people tell us, simply because they tell us,”

She felt the pull of the waters every single day. She felt the yearning in her, the gravity of it tugging at her blood. If the power of it could have unspooled her veins from her body, it would have.

You think being called a whore shames me? You think you haven’t bartered your body for your own ends?

But some men dream of times long dead, and times that never existed, and they’re willing to tear the present apart entirely to get them.

She looked at Priya’s hand as if she could read it—read every callus and whorl, every line upon Priya’s palm—like language.

Suddenly she was shaking, grief and anger rushing through her, and she did not want to be touched. That would be too much. Too much, when her skin already felt overfull with feeling.

For a moment she was utterly transformed, untouchable and yes—strong. But it wasn’t anything Priya had ever known as strength before.

“By becoming monsters?” Priya whispered. “By turning into weapons?” Yes.

Her words were like a slow knife, paring the skin from his ribs.

Pain can be a loving teacher.

“When you taste the deathless waters, they carve out a place for the gifts of the yaksa inside you. The power of the yaksa is a cuckoo in the nest of your body.

“I know that it hurts,” he said roughly. “I know. This is how I feel all the time. Scoured and twisted and—inhuman, Priya. This is our inheritance.”

“Weeping does not make you any less yourself,”

“Be careful with your tears,” her mother added, in a voice of cultivated restraint. “They’re blood of the spirit. Weep too much, and it will wear you thin, until your soul is like a bruised flower.”

Her mother had been wrong, though. Weep enough, and your nature becomes like stone, battered by water until it is smooth and impervious to hurt. Use tears as a tool for long enough...