Thorn Mansion

Nobody ever said life was easy, but this was not the life I was expecting.

I was one with the shadows and the empty desks around me, the school's laughingstock, the one everyone made fun of, but otherwise a nobody. People didn't even know my first name and I considered myself surprised when they did.

Lily Alex Torin is simple enough. Just Lily would be fine.

Life had always given me the short straw, and unless I'd murdered someone in my past life, there was no explanation I could come up with to justify it all--trust me I'd tried. Nearly eighteen years of trying; of putting up with it all.

But I was done. I was done with them all: the peers who laughed, the teachers spreading rumors, my parents who didn't want me, everyone in Lakeside who pushed and pushed and pushed. Until they finally pushed too far.

The ridicule, the laughing behind my back, to my face, the gossip.

I'd never been model beautiful before but I never imagined something as small at heterochromia could break me. But they did.

I thought I could write the ending to my own fairytale life, one where blood would meet steel under the moonlight in the woods, where sleep would be the only one to embrace me, to keep me forever. But I was wrong.
In the blink of an eye everything was turned on its head, like my hourglass had been flipped back over telling me my time wasn't quite yet. But it came at me hard like a ton of bricks, breaking me down into nothing only to build me back up right again.

This was the life I was meant to have.