A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel, #1)

by Sierra Simone

But I’m so susceptible to this kind of touch; I bloom like a rose when I’m handled like a weed,

“Yes, please!” I say eagerly, like the horny librarian I am.

I’ve just always been a girl who likes it to ache. As a child, I would bite my own forearm to see the marks it would leave, I would wrap a length of scratchy rope around my wrist and tug on it for hours to feel the chafing, pretending every kind of child’s game imaginable around it. I was a captive, a pirate held by an enemy crew, a princess kidnapped by an evil wizard. The pain made the games real . . . or maybe the games gave me an excuse for the pain. Either way, the bruises and marks and chafes gave me power somehow, some kind of strength, like they sharpened the rest of the world into a thing of fearful, breath-taking beauty, a beauty that could only be perceived through the power of hurting.