Seven Deadly Thorns

Seven Deadly Thorns is Amber Hamilton's debut novel, a 2025 dark academia romantasy.

Viola Sinclair has spent seventeen years hiding the shadow magic in her blood, passing as an ordinary student at the prestigious Vandenberghe Academy. When her secret is exposed, the queen hands her assassin — the Huntsman — a new assignment and a cursed tattoo: seven thorns on his arm, one for each of the seven days he has to find Viola and kill her.

The Huntsman turns out to be Roze Roquelart: an entitled prince, an insufferable classmate, and the person Viola despises most. But he needs something from her magic, and he is willing to spare her life to get it. What follows is a week-long pursuit of a truth neither of them has, complicated by a chemistry neither of them wants.

Hamilton draws on Beauty and the Beast and Snow White for a story about power, appetite, and the decision to stop hiding what you are.