The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)

by Tasha Suri

“Remember,” he said, voice low, nearly drowned out by the sonorous song, “that you have brought this upon yourself. Remember that you have betrayed your family and denied your name. If you do not rise… sister, remember that you have chosen to ruin yourself, and I have done all in my power to help you. Remember that.” The priest touched his torch to the pyre. The wood, slowly, began to burn. 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. Their shared blood and shared bone. “My brother,” she said. “I will not forget.”

She looked back up at the man and carefully let the thought of her knife drift away. She unclenched her trembling fingers. You’re lucky, she thought, that I am not what I was raised to be.

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 would force herself to survive. She would wait. And when an opportunity came to escape the Hirana—any opportunity—she would take it. She promised herself this, and sank down deep, deep. Down into the memory of her heart sisters’ screams as they burned.

She did not want to do this. She would regret doing this. She wanted to do this. She wanted to know if she could. She could hear Sima’s panicked breath.

A better man would have fought valiantly for those weeping women, those men. The poet. A better man would not have been in this room—in this brothel at all. But Rao was not a better man. He was only a man with a purpose, and his work was not yet done. He stumbled to the door. The poet was not looking at him. The poet had saved his life. Rao left him to his death.

She thought of Bhumika, pregnant and wed to a murderer, using everything she had to give a handful of orphans a modicum of life, and Ahiranya a modicum of stability. She thought of Rukh, who had thrown his lot in with rebels, who had rot-riven hands and no future to speak of. She thought of the Hirana. A heartbeat beneath her feet. Maybe wanting more than what she had was selfish. Maybe it was a mistake. But she thought of all she had suffered, and all Ahiranya had suffered, and felt the kernel of anger in her chest bloom open. “Yes,” she said. “Brother. I suppose I will.”

I do not think you are used to being seen, are you, Priya? It made something warm settle in her stomach, that thought.

when she had found that Pramila had failed to lock her room and stumbled out into the corridor and seen the maidservant on the triveni, she had witnessed a woman full of raw potential. 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.

gayyyyyy

“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.”

Priya swallowed. Lowered her head. 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?

In some ways, she was a temple daughter, still.

Bhumika did not entirely disagree. But Ashok’s words were an attack on her, not Vikram: on her choices, on her sacrifices, on the life of a Parijati highborn wife that she wore, a mask of her own.

Malini’s touch was so light. The princess felt fragile and looked fragile. How can you be this soft? Priya thought helplessly. How can you know what I am and look at me with eyes like that? How can you be so stupidly trusting? “You don’t make friends,” Priya said, speaking through the lump in her throat with some difficulty, “by speaking of their dead.” “No,” Malini said with a faraway look. “I suppose you don’t.” “I liked it better,” Priya managed to say, “when you spoke of peafowls. You can do more of that if you like.” Malini shook her head once more, a low sound of amusement escaping her. It wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was the closest she’d come since Priya had met her. And Priya, not knowing how to feel, guided Malini once more around the triveni, watching as the wind whipped about Malini’s hair—

GAYYYYYY

A small smile crossed Malini’s lips. “Ah, that is a lie you think you need to tell a highborn lady, is it not? But I know you have pride. We all do. You may ‘lady’ me, and ‘ma’am’ at your seniors, but I can see the iron in you.” Malini raised a hand, brushing her knuckles against the swelling of Priya’s cheek. Her fingers trembled, still. Priya could feel the sting of the touch. It burned through her blood, sang, and she thought, Oh. Oh no. This was more than simple fascination. This was attraction and it was… not remotely convenient.

So gay. I'm obsessed with them

She would take control of the dosages of poison. She’d prove herself biddable and easy to ignore once more, so that Pramila would hand her the responsibility, never questioning her motives. She’d keep the princess alive—for the sake of Bhumika and the household, and also because it was right. And not because she wanted to. Not because of that at all.

Lies

There had always been a distance between Priya and her elder temple sister. A gap that couldn’t be bridged by words. They had not been close, when the temple elders still lived and Priya was just a small girl. And from the moment Bhumika had taken Priya in, she’d made it clear they could not be family. The kinship between them had become something sharp and sour that bound them together regardless. It made honest words hard.

“Ashok,” Priya said deliberately, “was the last person to treat me like family.” One beat. Two. “Well,” Bhumika said in a controlled voice. “If that’s how you feel, then that’s how you feel.” “Bhumika, I am literally your servant.” “And what else could you be? My long-lost sibling, perhaps? A distant cousin? I could hardly adopt you, could I? Being the general’s wife—using the general—requires certain sacrifices. It always has.” Even in shadow—even in the sangam—Bhumika’s hand drifted without conscious thought to her waist. Priya felt oddly ashamed. She looked away. Why are we always so ugly to one another?

And Priya would have almost—almost—believed it was just a dream, if not for the memory of the flint of Bhumika’s eyes. The magic singing and coiling in her blood. The lines upon the floor, which had moved into a mimicry of stars.

“Because I am not pure.” Priya’s eyes widened, just slightly. Ask me, Malini thought, not looking away from Priya’s gaze, what makes me impure. If you’re brave enough, ask me. But Priya did not.

There. A real truth, unvarnished and laid bare. Malini had peeled her heart open and poured her heart’s blood out before Priya, given her everything ugly and tender, metal and sweet about her past. And Priya… Priya did not touch her, but she kept her hand near Malini’s own. She kept her eyes on Malini. Steady and sure. “I’ve told you many a time, my lady,” said Priya. “I’m only a maidservant. You don’t need to even think of apologizing to me.” “But I do think of it, Priya,” said Malini. “That’s all.”

I am obsessed with them

Malini stared at it. Then she looked at Priya. “I know something of medicine made of needle-flowers,” Priya said, voice quiet. Pramila, hovering by the door, was unlikely to have heard her. There was a message, in those brown eyes, in the way she held out the wine as if it were a gift instead of poison; as if it were something precious cupped between her palms. Trust me, her face said. That was the problem with making allies. At some point, inevitably, there came a moment when a decision had to be made: Could this one be trusted? Had their loyalty been won? Was their generosity a façade for a hidden knife? Malini made her choice. It was easier than it should have been. “Do you?” Malini said, with equal softness. “Well. As it happens, so do I.” She met Priya’s eyes. Without breaking their shared gaze, she took the carafe and drank deep.

“I’ll let you rest,” Priya said. “I’m going for a little walk. I won’t be long.” When Malini did not protest, Priya left the chamber. The silence followed behind her. It was the kind that had thorns.

She learned. Tears were a weapon of a kind, even if they made her fury smolder and rot and writhe inside her.

She learned that day to turn to a carapace of meekness rather than showing the true mettle of her fury. She learned, when Chandra hacked her hair, that there was a way she was expected to be, and if she failed to be it, there would be a price to pay.

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, and you will forget what real grief feels like. That was some small mercy, at least.

And tell her…” He blinked, not wishing to show his emotions before this woman. “I am her loyal servant. As I promised her. I have not forgotten, and never will forget, the vow we made over a knife.”

“Don’t look,” Ashok repeated. And though he should have been too weak to pick her up again, she heard him inhale and do it anyway. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, and didn’t try to be strong. And for once he did not ask her to be. It took two days for the leaves on Priya’s skirt to die.

They had saved each other. He’d left her for Bhumika to raise, because he’d loved her. He’d hurt her because he loved her. Love. 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.

“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.”

Kinda gay Malini

“You’ll kill me after all, Priya?” “No, you fool woman,” Priya said, eyes blazing. “No. Never me.” Malini was not sure she understood what she felt in that moment—the furious storm of feeling in her—but she knew the choice that lay before her. “I vow it,” she said. “If you save my life—if I am reunited with Rao—then Ahiranya is yours.” “Well, then.” Priya exhaled, long and slow. The thorns around her receded. The vine at Pramila’s throat crumpled. “We need to go. Now.”

She thought of Priya’s face, twisted into a rictus of hate. You can have a child, and hold that child against your own skin, and raise it. You can betray yourself and your values for that child. You can let the child escape, even though you know it should die—know, no matter how strong and firm its hand is in yours, that it is a blight and must be hollowed from the world to give the world chance enough to survive. And that child can look at you, with fury and contempt, and leave you to die.

Chandni shook her head slowly. “I think, perhaps, you mean her ill.” She sighed. “You always had strong passions, Ashok. I’d hoped they would leave you in time.” “Strange, when your intention was to ensure I had no time. But no matter—I still live, and you’re dying. So tell me where my sister is, elder,” he said, in a voice that trembled, venomous and childish in its grief, a wobbling, teetering fury born from broken love. “Tell me, or I will be forced to take the answer from you.”

“Some parts of me are monstrous,” Malini said, and when Priya turned to look at her she saw that Malini was clutching the needle-flower cask at her throat. “You know why? A woman of my status and breeding, Chandra told me, should serve her family. Everyone told me I should be obedient to my father and my brothers and one day, my husband. But Aditya and Chandra made their choices, and I didn’t simply accept those choices. I didn’t obey. Because my brothers were wrong. But more than anything, Priya—more than that—I’m monstrous because I have desires. Desires I have known all my life that I should not. I’ve always wanted things that would place me in danger.”

Her voice shook, a little, as if she trembled on the same edge as Priya. “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?”

Malini wanted to explain that being monstrous wasn’t inherent, as Priya seemed to believe it to be. It was something placed upon you: a chain or a poison, bled into you by unkind hands.

She felt much greater shame at her own rage: the cold iron weight of it, ever present and ever steady in her heart. 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.

“This face. This face right in front of me. The face you’ve shown me, the fact that you kissed me. I know it. I know you,” said Priya. “I know exactly who you are. There are other versions of you that I don’t know. But this one…” Her fingers were against Malini’s lips. “This one is mine.”

THEY'RE SO BEAUTIIFUL I CANT

Malini held the wood tight, adjusting to the burning warmth of it in her grip. She straightened. In her mind, she put aside the Malini she’d been beside the waterfall; put aside the woman she’d been for weeks on end, saved and seen by Priya’s eyes and hands and heart. She thought of pain, and how it could be leveraged, and the lessons your enemies can teach you, however unwitting. She thought of her own ghost haunting her: a princess of Parijat, eyes cold. She thought of Priya’s utter trust under her touch. Malini rose up and darted against Priya’s back, clutching at her side. She could feel the stickiness of Priya’s blood—her own panicked heartbeat. She forced herself not to shake. Nothing good could come from an unsteady hand. And then, without trembling, without hesitation, she placed the point of the knife beneath Priya’s ribs.

Shocked pikachu meme

“Malini,” Priya said. “Malini. I…” She swallowed. “You’ll see me again. I know it. No matter where you go or what you do, I’ll find you eventually, because you’re taking a piece of my heart with you. You carved it out, after all.”

“At least kiss me good-bye,” whispered Priya. “At least do that.” Malini cupped her face in her hands and kissed her. Malini took her lip between her teeth, soothed the sting of it with the gentleness of her tongue, and kissed her deeper. Priya, her blood singing, cupped the back of Malini’s neck in her palm, the warm, silky skin, brushed her thumb over the feathery, faint tendrils of her hair at her nape and the faint silver of an old scar and drew Malini closer again, and again. It was a lush kiss, a biting one. It was a good-bye, and it made Priya’s heart hurt. “I could make you stay,” Malini whispered, drawing back, her breath unsteady and a wild look in her eyes. “I could convince you. I’ve convinced so many people to do what I want in the past. If I can cajole someone into treason, surely I can convince you to stay by my side.” She leaned into Priya’s handhold. “You want to, after all. You don’t want to leave me. You wouldn’t be here, if you really wanted to leave me.” There was want in her words, but fear too. Priya knew. It was the same fear Malini had admitted when she’d spoken of how she had almost placed a knife in Priya’s heart. It was fear of herself. “You couldn’t convince me,” Priya told her. “Couldn’t trick me. I’m absolutely sure of that. I have a purpose and a goal and even you can’t make me give it up. I promise, Malini.” She kissed her again—the lightest brush of her lips against Malini’s cheek. “I promise.” Malini exhaled. “Good,” she said. “That’s goo...

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

“I promise you I’ll come,” Priya said to her. “I know you don’t think much of prophecies. Or portents, or fate, or anything of that sort. But one day I am going to come and find you. By then, I expect you will have long forgotten me. Maybe I’ll only be able to walk the edges of whatever mahal you live in, but as… as long as you want me to, I’ll come. If you want me to find you, I’ll come.” There were so many things Priya didn’t know how to say. 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. Priya said again, “If you want.” “You’ll always be welcome,” Malini said abruptly, as if the words had been wrenched out of her. “When you come and find me—you’ll be welcome. Now, Priya. Please.” Priya swallowed. “Good-bye, Malini,” she said.

I am ruined by these two

“A prophetic name is not always something whispered by a priest at a child’s birth,” a priest of the nameless had said, when Rao had asked why he had to be burdened with such a name, why him. “Even beyond our faith, there are people who discover their fates by chance. Their fate finds them—in dreams, in stories, in happenstance. Often they do not recognize truth when it graces them, and the knowledge of the prophecy passes them by. But your fate would have found you, young prince, whether you had been Aloran or no. Be glad that your faith leaves you forewarned of what is to come.” “It must be strange,” Rao had murmured. “Not to know your fate, even when you see it.” “Perhaps,” the priest had said, smiling benevolently. “But you are of the faith of the nameless, prince of Alor. You will recognize exactly such a prophecy when you see one. You may save another man from walking his path in ignorance one day.” Rao had not.

“No,” Rao said firmly. “I won’t make this choice for you. This is your task, Aditya. Not mine. If you’re to be emperor, if you’re to lead us—you have to take the first step. You have to decide. I won’t choose for you.” Aditya slipped from his grasp. Turned and walked away. And Rao bowed his head, thinking of his sister, who had burned, and the terrible weight of his own name. The hope of it. The reality of Aditya, bound by a vision. Unwilling to rise.

She sucked in a breath. He didn’t remember. She wanted to lift her hair and bare her neck. She wanted to show him how she had been hurt; to show him not simply the physical scar but the way Chandra’s cruelties large and small had flayed her sense of self, until she was raw, a furious tangle of nerves, until she was forced to build herself armor, jagged and cruel, to be able to survive. But he would not understand. He had never understood. Her hurts and her terrors, which had consumed her all her life, had always been small to him. He had either never truly seen them or simply, easily forgotten them.

“I wish things could be like they used to be.” “Do you really wish that?” Did she? Priya let herself think of it, just for a moment. Did she want to be a maidservant again, drinking in the orchard, laughing and joking with Sima? Moving around Bhumika in guarded circles? Staring up at the Hirana and yearning for something she barely had—something lost and wanted—the possibility of more always beyond her, drawing her on like a song? Did she wish she had never met Malini—never kissed her? Never left her behind? “Of course,” she lied. “Of course I do.”

“He’s not just one of yours,” Ganam said, easily adjusting his weight. “He’s ours too. Spied for us. Served our cause. Maybe freedom will mean being able to protect our children instead of using them,” he added, brushing Rukh’s leaf-strewn hair back from his forehead. “I’d like to believe that.” Priya looked at Rukh, pressing his head against Ganam’s shoulder. At Ganam’s guarded but tender expression. The crowd of people around them, and the anger in them, and the hunger too. For something better. For a future. “I’d like that too,” Priya said.

“See,” Priya said, with a smile. “I am clever. Shows you.” “I’ve never said that you’re not clever.” “You call me a fool all the time.” Bhumika wrinkled her nose and looked away. Sisters.

Siblings am I right?

Priya looked at him in return and chose not to think of all he had done. She thought instead of the fact that she and Ashok and Bhumika

were the last survivors of their family, a family not of blood but of history and suffering, love and the kind of hurt that only love can breed. She held her hand out to him. He took it and stood with care. She looked at the water ahead of her. Forced herself not to think of anything, not to hope for anything, as she clutched her siblings’ hands tightly, and entered. And sank.