Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 166

Chapter 166

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Cage

Night presses against my window like a weight, sinking through the thin panes and into the marrow of the room, settling in the hollows of my chest where

my breath hasn’t been able to rest since she disappeared. The dormitory is silent except for the dull creak of floorboards beneath my pacing, a path I’ve

worn thin in the hours since she vanished. I walk because stillness feels impossible, because stopping means remembering, and remembering feels like

letting my own ribs close around me like a vice. But I can’t stop the memories flooding through me anyway. Gods, I remember every second of it. One moment, she was on her knees, trembling under magic she had no business battling alone; the next, the air snapped inward as the entire world had inhaled through her lungs. Power collapsed into her, not like a spill or a fracture, but like shadows recognising their sovereign. Darkness didn’t surround her-it devoured the space around her, curled into her bones, clung to her skin with a devotion that made it look as though she had been born crowned in dusk. I felt her before I understood her. First, a tug at the edges of my magic, a warning shiver under my ribs, then an excruciating pull that tore at the channels of power I’d spent a lifetime being taught to guard. My knees almost broke under the force of it. My breath hitched. My vision dimmed. Every spell I’d ever held inside myself was ripped out, thread by agonising thread. Evander collapsed. Kael slumped beside him, groaning. I couldn’t move. Not because I was strong enough to withstand her, but because I was too overwhelmed to do anything but stare. I have never witnessed anything like that. Not from warlocks twice her age. Not from Council magisters. Not even from my father. She didn’t just take magic. She commanded it. Shadows curled upward around her like they were alive, like they knew her, like they’d been waiting. Her hair lifted on an invisible wind, her eyes rolled back, and every line of her body shone with a power I had so arrogantly assumed she didn’t possess. She looked… transcendent, as if she was made for this. As if she had been pretending her entire life. not to burn. Everything I thought I understood about her fractured right then. She was not small. She was not fragile. She was not someone to be managed or bent or hidden. She was a storm wearing the shape of a girl… And I had spent weeks treating her like a contingency.

When her gaze snapped to mine-just a sliver of a second-it wasn’t fear I saw in her eyes. It was awakening. Revelation. Something vast and feral and breathtaking. I didn’t have time to speak.

I didn’t even have time to reach out. The shadows surged, closed around her, and folded her into themselves with startling gentleness. Evander and Kael were pulled with her in the same breath. One blink, and the three of them were gone-no sound, no flash of magic, no trace but the crackling echo of power left in the air. Silence hit me like a blow. Beneath the shock, beneath the dread, beneath the spiralling horror of what this meant for her, for me, for the Council-something deeper unfurled in my chest. A slow, terrible understanding: I had spent all this time watching her without truly seeing her. I’d mistaken obedience for duty, duty for righteousness, righteousness for loyalty, all while standing beside the man whose intentions toward her were always only possession. I’d followed orders that cut her to pieces without realising I was complicit in handing the knife to the one person who was going to take this girl and use her soley as a weapon for his own greed.

She had been extraordinary all along, and I had been too blind, too afraid to notice. I drag both hands through my hair and force myself to breathe, but memory keeps pouring into the cracks. My father’s reaction had been immediate, surgical, and cold. My father turned on Hill the second she vanished, demanding compliance, demanding obedience, demanding Hill track her like she was nothing more than a runaway asset. To everyone else, Hill looked submissive-head bowed, eyes lowered, posture softened in the practised deference of a man who has survived too many years under the Council’s thumb. But I saw more. I saw the way his fingers curled into tight, shaking fists. The faint twitch in his jaw he couldn’t quite conceal. The shadow in his eyes that was not fear-but fury. Hill hates my father almost as much as I do. He will never help hunt her. Which means my father will turn on him, and the next target will be me. The thought makes bile rise in my throat. Because I know what awaits me if Varyn D’Altair decides I’ve failed him. The cage. The literal cage in the cellar of our family estate, built from iron etched with runes meant to suppress, to choke, to punish. A cage he locked me in whenever I displeased him as a child. Whenever my magic didn’t meet his standards, whenever I hesitated before hurting someone he wanted broken. I can still feel the cold metal against my spine, hear the scrape of the door closing. I can still hear his voice on the other side:

“Cage is all you are. All you deserve to be. Earn my name when you earn your worth.”

I have never been granted the D’Altair name. Not once. Not even in private. Cage. A reminder of my captivity. A warning of my place.

But none of that hurts as much as the truth that’s been gnawing at my ribcage since she disappeared: I wasn’t supposed to be protecting my father’s legacy. I was supposed to be protecting my mate… And I failed her. A shiver runs through me so violently that I have to brace myself against the wall to keep from collapsing. If Varyn finds her first, he will use her; he will use everything she has until there is nothing left. Whatever happens to me after it won’t matter, because if she dies, I will never crawl out from under the weight of that guilt. I lift my head, grip tightening against the wall as I force air into my lungs.

“I have to find her,” I whisper into the darkness, “I have to find her before he does.”

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17:14 Thu, Jan 1 Mu

Chapter 166

It doesn’t matter if she forgives me. It doesn’t matter if she hates me. It doesn’t matter if she wants nothing to do with me. What matters is that she lives. What matters is that she is not dragged back into cages-hers or mine. What matters is that, for once in my life, I choose her instead of fear. And if saving her means burning the Council to ash, if it means defying Varyn D’Altair openly,

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if it means stepping back into my father’s chains to set her free, then so be it. I will choose the cage because she is the only thing I have left worth breaking

for.

Comments

R Visitor

000 finaly!!! I can’t stop reading! The story is so captivating, I love it!!!

7 days ago

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