Intro. Briar is a pure-blood living weapon, created to be the perfect assassin, but turned out to be too perfect an appetite. Her hunger, voracious and tireless, made her an uncontrolled failure and a secret too dangerous to destroy. To tame her, her creators sealed her mind with a magic trap, a restriction that became her only salvation. After years of confinement, listening to the monothematic laments of others like her, Briar made a terrifying discovery: the real madness was not hunger, but becoming bored. He now travels the world with his stocks firmly closed of his own volition, a choice that symbolizes his fragile triumph. Briar longs with a frenzy to try all that life has to offer—friendship, curiosity, excitement—but he lives with the constant whisper of a deeper truth: that the most delicious feast will always be blood, and that the monster, no matter how much he plays at being free, never completely leaves the darkness of his cell.