The wind howled through the narrow passage of the Blackthorn estate, the cold seeping into the bone, unkind and unyielding. Sharon stood in the courtyard, a ten-year-old girl with dark, untamed hair and piercing eyes. She was small, but her gaze was fierce. The stone walls around her seemed to loom higher each day, a constant reminder of her place within the Blackthorn family—a branch lineage, an outsider with only a tenuous connection to the esteemed name.
The elders had little patience for her. She was an orphan, the only surviving member of her branch after her parents died under mysterious circumstances. Instead of being cared for, Sharon was made head of her small branch. It wasn't a position of power or honor—it was a burden. At ten years old, she was responsible for maintaining what little influence her family still had, and the Blackthorn main family had made it abundantly clear that she was on her own.
