✶ raquel’s Reviews > The Poet Empress > Status Update

The scribe, I realized with horror. Tel Pima. Knife wounds bloomed across his back like poppies.

Oye por favor qué angustia

The Annals might not be literomancy, I came to realize, but they were still magic all the same. They allowed for the impossible: to take someone, even a concubine trapped in the palace, to another place, another time. It was a warm and beautiful feeling. Like the world had only been for other people before, but now I was a part of it too. As if this country, this dynasty, they could also belong to people like me.

One night, he filled a tub full of mudwater and sedges, the kind that grew wild in rice fields. He then forced me to drink as much of it as possible without allowing me to a trip to the basin-room. “I heard that a paddy needs flooding for rice to grow. As you are a paddy creature, born from the mud, I have supposed you must need to be similarly watered.”

Esto es muy fuerte

He was writing spells. I knew because every time he finished inking a line, the characters glowed

Oye qué bonito, pero viniendo de Terren me resulta macabro

Her voice was as sharp-edged as the porcelain pieces scattered at her feet. “Mark my words, village cur: you are going to die. And once you die, I am going to take your place.”

Y esta idiota de qué va

His seal flashed as he cut a shallow gash under my rib, then tilted the blade so that my blood dripped onto the sheets. “If you tell anyone what happened last night,” he said, “I will kill you. If you try to escape the palace or get out of our betrothal, I will kill you.” Then he sent me away.

Uy

“Long ago, in a world burning with heat, the Archer shot down nine of the ten suns.”

“You still do not trust me, then. I shall prove myself to you with a gift.” He pulled from his sleeve a long, metallic object and offered it to me. When I didn’t take it, he let it clatter onto the wooden floor. “This needle, made of mountain silver, turns black in the presence of poison. I suggest you use it on anything another concubine brings you.” He whistled a cheery tune as he left me.

Uh qué interesante

The one who would receive the majority of his nights, anything from the full moon to the new. The one who would, after a betrothal period of three hundred days, wed him. The one who would—should Terren survive his coronation—become empress.

Pues me da que le espera una buena...

“Rice farmer,” Terren echoed, and the contempt in his voice was so great that I braced myself for the worst. But he didn’t kill me. Instead, he said, “I choose her. And I grant her the title of Noble Consort.” The entire room stilled with shock, but he kept speaking. “No, I change my mind. I shall make her Empress-in-Waiting. I shall wed her.”

SÍ HOMBRE, qué fuerte esto