Crown Of Thorns – Emma Rogers

“You’re allowed to react when four obscenely hot idiots—real or fake—get in your space.” “I still feel like they… used it,” I say. “Used me to see what my magic does when I’m… overwhelmed.” “Yeah,” she says. “They did. And that’s on them. Not you.” I blink hard. “Anyway,” I say roughly. “I got pissed off. Pushed back. Hard. Broke their fancy glass and briefly turned the tower into a magic dead zone. Ten out of ten, would recommend.” Rowan’s eyes widen.

“You dead-zoned the whole chamber?” she breathes. “For a heartbeat,” I say. “It felt like… everything went quiet. Then Thornwick freaked out and turned itself back on.” “Holy shit,” she says. She looks half horrified, half gleeful, which feels very on brand for us. “And the Princes?” she asks. “What were they doing while you were being used as a crash test dummy?” “Up there,” I say, jerking my chin vaguely ceiling-ward. “Watching. Looking very alarmed when I cracked their fishbowl.” “Good,” she says. “They deserve anxiety.”

I huff a laugh. Then the laugh catches on something in my chest and turns into a sound that might be a sob. “Hey,” Rowan says immediately. “Hey. It’s okay. Let it out.” “I’m fine,” I say, voice wobbling. The tears ignore me. They sting my eyes and then spill over, hot and sudden. Rowan slides an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into her side.

I let my forehead drop against her, fingers knotting in her sleeve. “I hate them,” I say, voice muffled. “I hate that they can just… decide to test me like that. I hate that envoys were watching. I hate that Blackthorn keeps making it sound like this is some big honor.

I hate that part of me is scared and part of me is excited and I don’t know which is worse.” She rubs slow circles between my shoulder blades. “I know,” she says quietly. “Of course you’re excited. Of course you’re terrified. You’ve been stuck in survival mode your whole life.

Perfect place to start my new life as an elite student at a prestigious Scottish boarding school for the unreasonably gifted. Totally normal. Totally fine. Totally not a scam. I fold the letter in my hands for the hundredth time, fingers tracing the raised ink like the words might suddenly rearrange into haha, just kidding, back to your council flat, sweetheart.

They don’t. Miss Wren Ashford, We are delighted to inform you that you have been accepted to Thornwick Academy on a full academic scholarship… Delighted. That makes one of us. The paper is thick, cream, expensive. The kind of paper that has never been within a three-mile radius of my postcode. The Thornwick crest at the top— some stylized crown made of thorns and stars—is embossed, the edges faintly silvered. It looks real. It feels real. It still doesn’t make any fucking sense.

I slouch lower, the bus seat groaning under me, and glance out the smeared window. The landscape’s gone from grey city sprawl to rolling green hills and then to this—endless stretch of mist and dark, hunched shapes of trees. The sky is a low slab of cloud, heavy and sulking. The kind of weather optimists call “moody” and everyone else calls “shit.” My phone buzzes in my pocket.

Mum. Again. I ignore it for three whole rings before guilt finally wins and I drag it out. Three missed calls. Two voicemails. A text. Where r u You took my card Wren answer ur phone I swallow around the tight little knot that sentence makes just under my ribs. I didn’t take her card. I borrowed it. With her half-sloshed, half-asleep permission. Also, I put it back. Eventually.

I open the first voicemail. Her voice crackles in my ear, warped by bad reception and too many cigarettes. “Wren? You better not have run off with my bank card again, I swear to God—” A sigh, the sound of the telly in the background. “They’re saying the electric’ll go off again if we don’t pay, and I can’t— I can’t do that forms thing online, you know I can’t.

Call me back.”

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 9758dc275beb4fd0
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,589,989 bytes (2.47 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 563
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 606.88 minutes
• Total Words: 121,375
• Total Characters: 690,327
• Average Words per Page: 215.59
• Average Characters per Page: 1226.16

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