Jasmine Throne Quotes

He lifted the lavender soap to his hair, and she squeaked. “You don’t use that in your hair,” she hissed, jolting from her perch to reach for one of the many hair tonics lining the little shelf above the bath. “Rose, lemon verbena, or …” She sniffed the glass bottle. “Jasmine.” She squinted down at him. He was staring up at her, his green eyes full of the words he knew he didn’t have to say. Do I look like I care what you pick?

This was what she had needed. Not forgiveness, not a balm for this strange writhing fury inside her, but the promise of someone to care for--to love--that she could not harm. Even if she had to. Even if she tried.

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.

After all, power makes everyone monstrous. At least a little.

Truth and lies were both tools, to be used when most necessary.

Power doesn’t have to be the way the regent and your rebels make it be,” Priya said eventually, making do with her own artless words, her own simple knowledge of the way the world worked. “Power can be looking after people. Keeping them safe, instead of putting them into danger.

There is power that is showy and fierce. And there is power grown slowly, and stronger for the time spent braiding its ancient strength.

Subtlety was cultivated out of necessity, by people who knew that power needed to be treated with care --who understand how easily it could be stolen or taken.

Maybe if I’d been raised gently by people who taught me to be kind and good, I’d know how to do it. But I was taught goodness and kindness, or what passes for it, by other damaged children, so I can’t.

If I must burn, then I’ll take you with me, throne and all.

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.

You think being called a whore shames me? You think you haven't bartered your body for your own ends? What do you think pouring death down your throat is?

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

Be careful with your tears,” her mother added, in a voice of cultivated restraint. “They’re blood of the spirit.

I was never lying about wanting you,” Malini said in a low voice. “Never with my eyes or my words. Never when I touched you. All of that was true.

When she is crowned in jasmine, in needle-flower, in smoke and in fire, he will kneel before he and name her," repeated Rao, in common Zaban. And suddenly Malini was shivering, every inch of her afire with a mad elation that rose up, up in her blood. "He will give the princess of Parijat her fate: He will say..." He swallowed. Raised his eyes, which were fierce and wet. "Name who shall sit upon the throne, princess. Name the flower of empire. Name the head that shall reign beneath a crown of poison. Name the hand that lit the pyre." The silence was deep; a drumming tense silence, drawn taut as a bowstring. "He will name her thus," finished Rao. "And she will know.

When you murder your brothers, remember that we loved you once, heart sister," Narini finished. "Remember that we love you still, no matter what you become.

He didn't object as she took up a place at the head of the tub and dumped some of the tonic into his short hair. The sweet, night-filled scent of jasmine floated up, caressing and kissing her. Even Rowan breathed it in as she scrubbed the tonic into his scalp. "I could still probably braid this," she mused. "Very teensy-tiny braids, so - " He growled, but leaned back against the tub, his eyes closed. "You're no better than a house cat," she said, massaging his head. He let out a low noise in his throat that might have very well have been a purr. Washing his hair was intimate-a privilege she doubted he'd ever allowed many people; something she'd never done for anyone else. But lines had always been blurred for them, and neither of them had particularly cared. He'd seen every inch of her several times, and she'd seen most of him. They'd shared a bed for months. On top of that, they were carranam. He'd let her inside his power, past his inner barriers, to where half a thought from her could have shattered his mind. So washing his hair, touching him... it was an intimacy, but it was essential, too.

I do not want you to hate me, she thought. I want you to like me. It’s absurd, but why else would I ask you to imagine me in my finest saris? Why else would I ask you to imagine me beautiful?

Oh, vows could be broken. Of course they could. And yet Priya was… not entirely a safe person to lie to. And worse still, Malini did not want to break a promise to her. There was a sound, somewhere below them. Priya’s jaw hardened. “Promise me this, or one way or another, you die here.” “You’ll kill me after all, Priya?” “No, you fool woman,” Priya said, eyes blazing. “No. Never me.

Malini laughed—a glorious laugh like the sound of a blade unsheathed.

You and Chandra both believe the right to rule is something that must be given to you, by the mothers of flame, by blood, by the nameless. I'm no such fool. I know there is no higher power that sanctions a king or emperor. There is only the moment when power is placed in your hand, and there is on 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.

Malini looked at Priya's face. Thought, I do not know this woman at all. And yet that did not frighten her as it should have. She knew how many faces people possessed, one hidden beneath the other, good and monstrous, brave and cowardly, all of them true.

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.

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. And yet she felt then, with an aching resentment, how Vikram would use their child to reduce and erase her. 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.

They had saved each other. He'd left her for Bhumika to raise, because he'd loved her. He'd hurt her because he'd 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 hurt any less.

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?

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

Chandra had taught her how fear felt. And shame. The way they could settle in your stomach, heavy as a stone. How they could alter your nature to something bidden and chained.

I don’t know anything about birthing,” Priya confessed, holding Bhumika’s hand tight. “Oh, good,” said Bhumika. “Well. Neither do I. A shame that we’re going to need to learn like this.

It would be foolish to try to take what was not hers to take. Royal sons were the ones who wore the crown. Royal women were... Well. She thought of her fellow princess Alori, and of highborn Narina, and how they had screamed when the flames had touched them. How they smelled as they burned, as their crowns of stars splintered around their skulls, as even the sweetness of perfume and flowers could not block out the acrid scent of burnt hair and silk, or the smell of flesh, fat, marrow burning and burning and burning. Royal women are only crowned in death, Malini thought furiously.

Her voice turned wistful. “You’ve never seen me how I really am. I wish you could. I used to wear the most lovely silk saris in Parijat, and flowers twined in my hair like a crown. I was beautiful then.” Priya swallowed. You still are.

Symbolism is important. And freedom... You will not understand this, Princess Malini. But there is a subtle pain the conquered feel. Our old language is nearly lost. Our old ways. Even when we try to explain a vision of ourselves to one another—in our poetry, our song, our theater masks—we do so in opposition to you, or by looking to the past. As if we have no future. Parijatdvipa has reshaped us. It is not a conversation, but a rewriting. The pleasure of security and comfort can only ease the pain for so long.

I am not thorny," Malini said. "I cried." "Weeping does not make you any less yourself," her mother replied. She touched her fingertips to Malini's shorn hair. "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, and you will forget what real grief feels like. That was some small mercy, at least.

There was no void in her any longer. Whatever she was— weapon, monster, cursed or gifted— she was whole.

She smells,” said Priya, staring down into the baby’s tiny face. “The first words the poor thing gets to hear, and that’s what you offer her,” Bhumika said. “Give her back to me.

What do you want from me? And even more dangerous. What do I want from you?

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.

You spoke of hating those with imperial blood,” murmured Malini. “You spoke of your loved ones burning. Well, I have lost people I love to the pyre, too. At my brother’s orders. Let us see him off the throne together, 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?

He should have left then. But Rao was one of the nameless faith, and he understood the sacred power of instinct--the way a body's knowing could be a gift from the nameless, a prophecy written in the thud of the heart or the ice of fear winding down a spine. He felt it then: a kind of foreboding. Not quite fear. Not quite curiosity.

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.

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, and you will forget what real grief feels like.

You will not understand this, Princess Malini. But there is a subtle pain the conquered feel. Our old language is nearly lost. Our old ways. Even when we try to explain a vision of ourselves to one another—in our poetry, our song, our theater masks—we do so in opposition to you, or by looking to the past. As if we have no future. Parijatdvipa has reshaped us. It is not a conversation, but a rewriting. The pleasure of security and comfort can only ease the pain for so long.

Ashok had not been worried. He'd known he was strong enough, because he had looked at the carvings of the temple elders from the Age of Flowers, those men and women who had conquered the subcontinent on the yaksa's behalf. Who had held terrible, incalculable power. He had looked and thought, I am not going to be like our elders, holding only a shadow of power, a faint echo of what once was. I won't sit with the regent or bow to the emperor in Parijat. I am going to be like you.

There was a not-quite-secret stairway in the back of the library building that led up to a balcony bordered by delicately arched windows. These looked out over a small courtyard lined with sour-orange trees. Across from this were the royal baths- which connected directly to the audience chamber, banquet hall, and eventually the throne room itself. That had sounded strange until Jasmine explained to Aladdin that sultans often entertained foreign guests and consulted with top advisers while enjoying a pleasant mint-scented sweat in the steam rooms.

CYRANO: Thy name is in my heart as in a sheep-bell, And as I ever tremble, thinking of thee, Ever the bell shakes, ever thy name ringeth! All things of thine I mind, for I love all things; I know that last year on the twelfth of May-month, To walk abroad, one day you changed your hair-plaits! I am so used to take your hair for daylight That,--like as when the eye stares on the sun's disk, One sees long after a red blot on all things-- So, when I quit thy beams, my dazzled vision Sees upon all things a blonde stain imprinted. ROXANE (agitated): Why, this is love indeed!. . . CYRANO: Ay, true, the feeling Which fills me, terrible and jealous, truly Love,--which is ever sad amid its transports! Love,--and yet, strangely, not a selfish passion! I for your joy would gladly lay mine own down, --E'en though you never were to know it,--never! --If but at times I might--far off and lonely,-- Hear some gay echo of the joy I bought you! Each glance of thine awakes in me a virtue,-- A novel, unknown valor. Dost begin, sweet, To understand? So late, dost understand me? Feel'st thou my soul, here, through the darkness mounting? Too fair the night! Too fair, too fair the moment! That I should speak thus, and that you should hearken! Too fair! In moments when my hopes rose proudest, I never hoped such guerdon. Naught is left me But to die now! Have words of mine the power To make you tremble,--throned there in the branches? Ay, like a leaf among the leaves, you tremble! You tremble! For I feel,--an if you will it, Or will it not,--your hand's beloved trembling Thrill through the branches, down your sprays of jasmine! (He kisses passionately one of the hanging tendrils.) ROXANE: Ay! I am trembling, weeping!--I am thine! Thou hast conquered all of me! --Cyrano de Bergerac III. 7

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.

You’ve never seen me how I really am. I wish you could. I used to wear the most lovely silk saris in Parijat, and flowers twined in my hair like a crown. I was beautiful then.” Priya swallowed. You still are.

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.

You can’t save them all, she reminded herself. You’re no one. This is all you can do. This, and no more.

She huffed a laugh that might have been a sob and wrapped her arms around his waist as if trying to steal his warmth. Her sodden hair tumbled down, the scent of her—jasmine and lemon verbena and crackling embers—rising above the smell of almonds to caress his nose, his senses. Rowan stood with his queen in the rain, breathing in her scent, and let her steal his warmth for as long as she needed.

Jasmine it is, you buzzard.

He should have left then. But Rao was one of the nameless faith, and he understood the sacred power of instinct—the way a body’s knowing could be a gift from the nameless, a prophecy written in the thud of the heart or the ice of fear winding down a spine. He felt it then: a kind of foreboding. Not quite fear. Not quite curiosity. There was knowledge here, if he was willing to take it.

You and Chandra both believe the right to rule is something that must be given to you, by the mothers of flame, by blood, by the nameless. I’m no such fool. 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.

Qué gran vacío había entre el conocimiento que guardaba dentro de sí misma y la persona que aparentaba ser

Tienes suerte”, pensó, “de que no soy aquello para lo que me criaron”.

You shouldn’t be so rude to women holding knives,” Malini said, holding Priya tight, tight. “It isn’t wise.

If only she had Bhumika’s eloquence, or her keen, instinctual understanding of Parijatdvipa’s thorny games of power.

Blood burns red, through the air it’s blown, Blood pours bright, across the fated throne, Blood draws truth, and rips apart the mind, Blood creates pain, it kills the weak-spined.

I will call for the physician,” he said, and in that she heard a wealth of things: his fear that he had, perhaps, hurt her and by extension hurt the child within her. The belief that all she’d said was a product of her flesh—her pregnancy, her so-called womanly weakness of heart and body—and not evidence of her intelligence, her political acumen, and all that she was.

History is my strong suit." She had long ago taken it upon herself to read every book in the palace library, after discovering just how flimsy her education was. While the sons and daughters of palace courtiers came home from school each day brimming with new knowledge, Jasmine was kept at home with a tutor--- and her private lessons in etiquette and art weren't exactly the foundation that kings were built on. Sometimes Jasmine had the sneaking suspicion that Taminah never expected her to end up on the throne at all, that she was preparing the princess to be a royal wife instead. After all, she had mentioned more than once the possibility of Jasmine having a son in the future who could rule in her stead. But one other thing the older woman had done right was introduce Jasmine to books, especially Agrabah's myths and fables, in which terrors jumped from every page. Stories with heroes and demons so vivid, they could have been real. After she had read all the stories she could get her hands on, Jasmine moved on to history texts and illustrated maps. Hers might have been an incomplete education, but those books allowed a sheltered princess to see some of the world, both real and imagined. And they gave her a window into the past.

The sultan had proven himself on the battlefield back when he was crown prince he'd earned the people's love and reverence before he'd ever taken the throne. Meanwhile, as much as Jasmine had longed to leave the palace gates, in all her eighteen years she'd barely been allowed outside. The comparisons were inevitable, and yet impossible for her to match. I'll have to find my own way, Jasmine realized as she gazed out the crowd. To turn my differences into strengths and prove myself a true leader. Maybe she too could be a diamond in the rough.

Outside the closed doors to the throne room, Sharif the high elder waited, holding a kaftan robe of red silk and velvet in one hand and a long spear nearly twice his height in the other. Jasmine's heart beat faster as she recognized the gold trim and signature jewels lining the robe, the ancient craftsmanship of the spear. These had belonged to Cyrus the Great, the first ruler of the empire. And in mere moments, she would be the first woman to feel them against her skin. Nadia untied Jasmine's peacock cape while the high elder held out the red robe. "Today you shed the persona of Jasmine, the princess," he said, "and step into the skin of a sultana." Jasmine took a deep breath, slipping her arms into the preserved silk. The material was more fragile than anything she'd worn before, and she was conscious that one wrong step, one tear of the fabric, would be rip through history. Yet she felt stronger in the cape too, as though Cyrus were transferring his power through it to her. When Sharif handed her Cyrus's spear, she could barely contain her awe.

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.