Nightshade (Sorrowsong University, #1)

by Autumn Woods

She was mine, and always should’ve been mine. My love for her was a disease, and disease knows no boundaries. It knows no laws and no repentance. It doesn’t care who belongs to who; it’ll sever branches from a family tree without thought.

Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power.

Sorrowsong just doesn’t mean it like the other universities do. They’re not referring to cures for cancer or faster ways to get to the moon; they’re talking about blackmail. Manila folders exchanged in shadowy alleys, and business deals conducted underground.

Sorrowsong is where the wealthiest of the world’s men and women are sculpted into little clones of their corrupt parents, and the air around me reeks of wasted potential.

“Rather die than go in?” he asks, an easy grin spreading across his face. The smooth baritone of his voice unsettles me; it doesn’t match his aura or the wicked look in his eye. I can’t quite place his accent. I pull a lock of hair from where it has plastered itself to my lips, eyeing him warily. “Something like that.” With two fingers, he shifts the car into reverse. “I’ll back up. I can make it look like an accident. You’d be the third one I have done today.” I’d smile if my face wasn’t frozen in place by the biting wind. “Marvelous. If you could just throw me off the drawbridge when you’re done.” “I heard the fish needed feeding.”

HELP HAHH

With bills piling up on my doorstep and loneliness gnawing at my bones, I begged the universe for a reason to get up.

Giving the prophecy

There’s a pride in Scotland. It’s in the heart of the people and the veins of the landscape. It’s in the way people carry themselves, in the way people stop to chat on the hiking trails, in stories at the pub, in the deep gold of the whisky.

To be loved is to be known,

In the nineteen times it’s happened in my head, my first time on top of you didn’t look like this. ________________

She’s everything I’ve been asking the universe for, and she fucking hates me.

Ophelia is my deadly nightshade. She’s bad for me. I know what she’ll do to me, but she’s too beautiful. Too enticing. She’s too deep in my bloodstream already, painful and ecstatic all at once.

Meet me under the rugby stands. I’ll get on my knees and show you just how humble I can be.

“I’ve built my walls too high.” “They’re worth the climb.” “They aren’t.” We stop on the mansion steps, his tone soft. “They are. For me, they are.”

He makes me feel so pretty.