The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)

by Tasha Suri

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

“He wrote that there is no meaning in the universe: no fate, no high blood, no rights of kings over land. Everything is emptiness. The world only has meaning when we give it meaning.”

“Power can be looking after people. Keeping them safe, instead of putting them into danger.”

“Weeping does not make you any less yourself,”

As if love excused anything. As if the knowledge that he was cruel and vicious and willing to harm her made her heart ache any less.

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.