The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)

by Tasha Suri

“If you remembered your lessons, neither of us would be here.” No, thought Malini. I would be dead.

but her mind was still a tangle of knotted thoughts, made slow by the weeks of needle-flower. She could only sit, and stare at her plate, and feel her own mind stumble drunkenly over what must be done.

Her lungs ached. Her vision was going black. But the dark was rich and textured, rippling like a lightless river. As Meena’s hand tightened an increment further, Priya felt the dark cleave open. She felt water at her feet; three rivers joined around her ankles, swirling over her flesh. In the dizzying dark, she saw her brother’s shadow, kneeling, inked in red by the veins beneath her eyelids.

there was a poetry in her death that moved him. He was best at war—the kiss of a blade against a throat held more eloquence to him than a verse—but he had sat in pleasure houses, listening to the poets spin tales about the brave rebels, weaving them into the rich epics of the Age of Flowers.

But his love—no. The blood tenderness of it was nothing but weakness.

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

In his face, Vikram saw a shadow of the glinting, brittle evil of the emperor.

who joined stories of seductive beings of flower and flesh, of two men lying together, and of world-conquering glory on the same lyrical breath.

Someone powerful who looked at her and looked at her, as if Malini—sick, unkempt, her curls in a snarl and her mind liquid—had the sun inside her.

“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.”

She ground her own teeth together, forcing herself not to ask the razor-winged question racing about her skull. What do you want from me? And even more dangerous. What do I want from you?

The world beyond the palanquin screen had changed since her girlhood. Although the sound and motion remained, the edges of the portrait had frayed. There were more beggars now. The buildings were poorer, drabber. Color had leached out of Hiranaprastha. And Bhumika was no longer just a quiet body, consuming the city with her eyes alone.

“The cosmic rivers from which universes are born,” Priya said. “Rivers that flow from the yolk of the World Egg. Rivers of heart’s flesh and heart’s blood; rivers of immortality; rivers of the soul. The yaksa were born in these rivers as fish, and swam through them until they found the world on the shore.

“Fulfill your purpose then,” Pramila ground out. “Accept your fate, so that I no longer need to look at you.” Malini said nothing to that, and Pramila’s expression flickered—spasmed with something dark that lay far beyond hate.

“Then let me just keep my hands below yours,” said Priya. “You try to walk, my lady, and I’ll be here to catch you if need be.” Their hands weren’t touching but shared the same air, the same fall of shadow, as Malini took one tentative step after another, and Priya walked backward in front of her.

The silence followed behind her. It was the kind that had thorns.

But can you promise me you won’t drown Ahiranya in blood?” “I promise to do what is best for Ahiranya.” “That isn’t an answer,” she said.

YOU'D THINK THIS WAS AN EASY QUESTION

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, and you will forget what real grief feels like.

And if fate must be star-burned into us, then I don’t believe we can’t bend to the needs of our times and turn from our prescribed path.

Her face was lifted up, catching a shaft of dappled sunlight come in from the high slat window. There were birds playing on its edge. Green parakeets with vivid orange beaks, the flit of their wings throwing shadows across Alori’s upturned head. She looked at him then, her eyes shaded by wings.

A shadow passed through her voice, black-winged.

The grip of pressure around her skull, a band like clutching bones around her lungs, luminous blue meeting the snap of her opening eyes and— Silence.

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.

a flower-wreathed princess of Parijat with a shrewd smile and a voice full of secrets, who had the hunger and the wherewithal to tear Chandra from his throne

“If you kill her,” she said, in a voice that seemed to come from somewhere far beyond her, from somewhere old and beyond mortal lifetimes, “you do not know what you will make of me. I will see you ruined, Pramila. I will see your living daughters ruined. I will blot all that brings you joy out of this world. I will murder more than your flesh. I will murder your heart and spirit and the very memory of your name and your lineage. I vow it.”

hunger at the base of her skull as she watched Priya turn the knife over in her grip. Tell me what you are, the hunger was saying. Tell me what you are, every layer of you, tell me how I can use you—

Her own face lay beneath the sediment. Her own hair, a loose cloud of black fronds. Those were her own eyes, closed as if in sleep. From her chest bloomed a great lotus, bursting through exposed ribs. From her eyes streamed marigold petals, flecked gold and carnelian, seeping from beneath the closed lids. Not a reflection. She knew it wasn’t that. And if she hadn’t been sure, she saw beneath it, in the slow shifting gray of the water’s bed, a dozen more tangled figures, held by lotus roots, their hair coiling in water, their bodies half root and half flesh, beautiful and strange.

within it was a flower that unfurled in thorns, virulent blue and black, its heart a cosmos.

A name should not be said until the time is right. A name should only be spoken when the fulfillment of a prophecy is at hand. And yet. It was not like telling his name at all. A secret told to the dead is a secret still untold.

You’re deep waters, Malini. You’re so much more than you’re willing to show me, and that scares me. I think I’m always waiting for you to turn on me.”

Malini placed her hand flat against Priya’s back. The water was cold and the heat of her skin—of her outstretched fingers—burned. She’d placed her hand against Priya’s blouse, under the drape of her sari, between her shoulder blade and her spine, where her heart thumped inside the cage of her ribs. It was like she was trying to hold the frantic rhythm of Priya’s heart in her palm.

a bruising warmth that made everything vicious and hungry rise up in Priya with a swiftness

There is a void that holds the world. Some countries, some peoples, some faiths think it resembles water or rivers. But Rao knew better. As a boy, before he’d been fostered to Parijat, he’d been taught by the family priest, in the garden of the nameless that bordered the Aloran royal mahal. Before there was life, there was the void. And in the void—in its lightless unknowability—lay the truth of the nameless god. He gazed into it now. Hung in its black nothing and waited as the voice of the nameless unfurled around him, opening like stars.

a glorious laugh like the sound of a blade unsheathed.

“I never had a mother,” he said. “And—you are not my mother.” A choked laugh. “A mother doesn’t follow her son to war.”

“I am going to have to carve out a new face. A face that can pay the price I need to pay. I am going to become monstrous,” Malini said, tasting the weight of the words upon her lips, her tongue. “For so long I have only wanted to escape and survive. But now I am free, and for the sake of my purpose… for the sake of power,” she admitted, “I am going to become something other than human. Other than simply not good. I must.”

I almost slid a knife into your heart. How can you be here? How can you speak to me?” “Well, if you had, I’d be dead, and we wouldn’t be talking about anything.” She shrugged.

the people you care about can be used against you. And strength—strength is a knife turned on the parts of yourself that care.

I was taught goodness and kindness, or what passes for it, by other damaged children, so I can’t.

She couldn’t smile. Her heart felt like a howl.

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.

I know there is no higher power that sanctions a king or emperor. There is only the moment when power is placed in your hands, and there is one truth: Either you take the power and wield it, or someone else will. And perhaps they will not be as kind to you and yours.

“She looks like an old lady, don’t you think?” Priya observed. “Babies always do, Pri. She’ll get prettier.” Sima looked down, and added dubiously, “Probably.”

She looked and felt… nothing. The nothing was so solid, so complete, that she knew it wasn’t true emptiness or true neutrality. It was a feeling like a fist around a throat.

She could make herself something monstrous. She could be a creature born of poison and pyre, flame and blood. She had told Aditya that when the opportunity to seize power came—to wield it—the opportunity had to be taken and held and used. If he would not wield it, she would. If he would not take their brother’s throne, in that room of sweet falling jasmine where the sisters of her heart had burned, then she would do it.