At Blackthorn Academy, reputation is everything—and ruin is entertainment.When Zaria Vale returns to the elite boarding school she once left behind, she expects the whispers. The stares. The pity. What she doesn’t expect is to be publicly humiliated by Torin Harrington, the childhood sweetheart she spent two years loving from a distance, only to discover he’s no longer the golden boy she remembered—he’s cruel, possessive, and unwilling to let her go.But Torin isn’t the only danger waiting at Blackthorn.Ryker Kane has grown into something far more lethal than the boy Zaria used to know. Dark-eyed, sharp-tongued, and untouchably powerful, Ryker moves through Blackthorn like he owns it—and maybe he does. He’s everything Zaria should avoid: her ex-boyfriend’s rival, Blackthorn’s most feared elite, and the one boy who has always looked at her like she was something worth losing control over.As tensions rise, stolen glances turn into reckless touches, whispered arguments turn into heated nights, and the chemistry between them becomes impossible to ignore. But Blackthorn is built on secrets, and when Zaria is pulled into a shadowy society known as the Thorn Crowns, desire quickly becomes tangled with danger.Now hunted by rumors, trapped between obsession and devotion, and drawn deeper into Ryker’s world of loyalty, violence, and forbidden temptation, Zaria must decide who she wants to be at Blackthorn: the girl Torin tried to destroy—or the one who rises beside Ryker and becomes untouchable.Because at Blackthorn Academy, love isn’t gentle.It’s possessive. It’s vicious. And it always leaves a mark.