Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 161

Chapter 161

Evander

57

I wake too slowly for my liking. My eyelids feel heavy, my limbs heavier, like someone packed sand beneath my skin. But the moment I pull in a breath, I know something has fixed itself. The hollow, scraped-clean feeling of over-siphoning isn’t clawing at my ribs anymore. Some of my magic has regenerated. Not much. Just enough that it hums faintly in my blood, warm and sluggish, but present. I’ll take it. A low groan escapes me before I can catch it, and the movement beside me drags my attention sideways. Kael is still passed out-flat on his stomach, one arm flung carelessly over my hip like he forgot where the hell he was even sleeping. His hair is a disaster. His breathing is steady. Good. He needed the rest. I push myself upright, rubbing my palms over my face. The old shack creaks softly with the wind outside-thin walls, rotting beams, dust floating like ghosts in the strip of light sneaking through a board-slit window. Allison is crouched in the far corner, fingers wedged beneath a loose floorboard. Her other hand digs around inside the space beneath it, shoulders tight with focus. She’s changed into all black. Hoodie, fitted pants, sneakers. Gone is the Thornhill uniform and the student. She looks like someone who grew up surviving places exactly like this. She pauses the moment I groan again, her head snapping up. Our eyes meet. Her flickering magic has quieted- thank the gods-but she still feels different. Like she’s holding twenty different powers just beneath her skin and fighting to keep them leashed.

“Allison?” My voice is rough. She stands and crosses the room quickly.

“How are you feeling?” she asks, scanning me like she’s counting the places I might be bleeding from.

I shrug, rolling my shoulders as the magic in them flares weakly. “I’m okay. Better than before.”

Kael chooses that exact moment to make a sound halfway between a groan and a dying wolf. “Yep. I’m good too,” he mutters into the floorboards. “I just feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, but… y’know. Alive.”

Allison winces, guilt flashing across her face. “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey,” I say firmly. “It’s fine. We’re both still breathing, so I’m calling that a win.”

Kael lifts a hand in a lazy thumbs-up. “Seconded. Nothing to apologise for.”

She blows out a breath but doesn’t look convinced. Her eyes flick toward the boarded window as if the woods outside are breathing down her neck. “Well… I hope you’re ready for an adventure,” she says, pulling her hoodie tighter. “Because we need to move,

“Move?” I ask. “Where? Why?”

Kael props himself up on his elbows. “Yeah, trouble, what’s the plan?”

“The plan is survival,” she says bluntly. “And rule number one is never stay in one place too long.”

“But you said you used to stay here,” I remind her, gesturing to the cramped shack.

“I did,” she says. “And in about fifty other places too. I used to bounce from one hideout to the next, sometimes every night. I found new places along the way, marked which ones were safe, memorised escape routes, figured out where to run if someone was tracking me and right now?” She flicks her gaze between us. “That’s exactly what we have to do. We’re registered. They can track either one of you or all three of us. Staying here is basically waiting to be caught.”

She moves back to the floorboard and pulls it the rest of the way open. Her arm lisappears into the dark space beneath, and when she withdraws it, she’s holding a black backpack.

Kael whistles. “What’s in that?”

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Chapter 161

“Supplies,” she says simply. “A bit of food. Some water-old, but drinkable. A couple of weapons and some cash. Each of my hideouts has something stashed. Not much, but enough to get me to the next place.” She slings the backpack over one shoulder and straightens. “So,” she says, voice quiet but firm, “we need to start moving before they find us. We keep ahead of the trackers, stay unpredictable, and pray we find someone who can help us conceal our magic.”

My stomach tightens from the sudden, undeniable realisation that this is the world Allison survived alone and Kael and I are now part of it.

“Okay,” I say, pushing myself fully to my feet. “Just tell us what you need.”

“Good,” she breathes. “Then grab what you can carry. We leave in five.”

Allison doesn’t give us much time to breathe before she’s moving again. She crosses the room in a few quick steps, grabs both Kael’s and my school uniform coats and shoves them deep into the hollow beneath the floorboards.

“If someone finds this place,” she says, pushing the board back into place with a sharp click, “the last thing they need is proof two Thornhill students were here.”

Fair point. She dusts her hands off and then straightens, her gaze sweeping over Kael and me. She stalks closer, eyes narrowing like she’s inspecting animals she’s about to unleash into the wild.

“What?” Kael asks slowly. “Why are you looking at us like that?”

“You look too… well-dressed,” she mutters.

Kael frowns down at himself. “I look like shit.”

“Yeah, but like polished shit,” she says. “Academy shit. Rich shit. Not the kind of shit that survives off-grid.”

He opens his mouth to argue, but she’s already pulling a blade from the pocket of her hoodie.

Kael immediately freezes. “Okay, whoa-Allison? What are you-hey!”

She grabs the hem of his pants and slices a clean tear through the fabric before he can scoot away. “Making you look like you belong out here,” she says calmly, like she’s discussing the weather.

Kael sputters. “You could have asked!”

“You would have said no.”

He pauses, then grudgingly shrugs. “Okay… fair.”

She turns on me next, and I lift my hands in surrender. “Go on. Just avoid major arteries,”

A ghost of a smile flickers across her lips before she kneels and drags the blade through my pant leg, creating slashes that make the expensive academy fabric look like it’s survived a bar fight with a bear, She tears a few seams with her fingers for good measure, then sits back on her heels, studying her work.

“We need to make you look…” she begins.

“Unregistered?” I finish for her.

Her eyes meet mine. There’s something vulnerable there for a heartbeat-like hearing me say it out loud stings in a place she never wants touched.

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