She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor Duology Book 1)

“But you know what’s worse than suffering? Not suffering, because you’re not even alive to feel it.”

It startled her to hear him say I. It was like reaching for someone’s cheek in the dark, but finding instead the intimate wetness of their open mouth.

Denying desire only made yourself vulnerable to those who were smart enough to see what you couldn’t even acknowledge to yourself.

Loathing, shame, and anger rushed through him as a series of escalating internal temperatures. The anger, when it finally came, was a relief. It was the cleanest and hottest of the emotions; it scoured him of everything else that might have lingered.

I suppose he was a cherished son, the kind brought up believing he should bring honor to his ancestral line. But then he was cut, and made to serve the very ones who did it, and he knows his ancestors would spit at him rather than receive his offerings.” Then, slowly, because talking about her girlhood still felt wrong, she added, “But that’s the d

There was a touching pureness to it that Ouyang envied. He had never been able to inhabit a moment of pleasure as simply and purely as Esen did. Just knowing that it was transient—that any moment would be drained of its sweetness and vividness once it became memory—made it bittersweet to him even as it was happening.

There was a strange, ill satisfaction there, as if Esen had proved something Lord Wang wanted—but in having proved it, had killed some other part that was still holding out hope.

For the first time since her adolescence she looked down at her body and didn’t feel aversion, but simply the fact of herself.

The body became used to exercise, particular sounds and sensations, or even physical pain. But it was strange how shame was something you never became inured to: each time hurt just as much as the first.