Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 169

Chapter 169

Kael

My ribs ache, my thigh bleeds, my knuckles sting, but I don’t care. I can go another round. Hell, I want another round. I’m burning with it, vibrating with it, half-shifted instinct scraping under my skin like fire trying to break out.

“Let’s go,” I growl toward Rafe, flexing my fingers. “Round three.”

But Rafe only gives me a slow, disappointed shake of his head, tsking like he’s denying a child a toy.

“This is my pit,” he says, voice dripping with amusement and authority, “and I decide who fights.”

I take a step closer, chest rising with another snarl. “You want your three fights, let me finish this.”

Rafe grins, teeth flashing. “Oh, I’ll get my three-fight payout. But I want it from my prize fighter.” His eyes slide past me like a blade. “Get in the ring, Ally.”

“No.” It leaves my mouth instinctively, violently.

Evander echoes it so fast it’s almost the same sound from across the ring. But Allison moves before either of us can reach her. She steps toward the pit, and for the briefest moment, she glances at us with something like resignation sharpened into steel.

“It’s fine,” she says. “Trust me.”

“Ally-” Evander starts.

“Allison-don’t-” I say at the same time.

“Stop.” She cuts through all of it with one simple shake of her head. “I’ve done this before.”

Those five words gut me in a way the panther couldn’t. Because she says them quietly, with no drama, no fear, no attempt to soothe us-only the certainty

of someone who knows how ugly survival can get, and how easily she can slip back into the version of herself that learned to survive it.

Evander swears under his breath, “You don’t have to-”

“Yes,” she says softly. “I do.”

And then she drops into the pit.

My hands curl uselessly around the railing, nails digging into the wood, because I have never felt so goddamn helpless.

Evander grips the rail beside me, knuckles stark white, jaw locked hard enough that I’m amazed his teeth don’t crack. “She can’t fight like this,” he murmurs, a tremor in his voice. “She’s drained. She’s-”

“No,” I say quietly, not trusting my voice, “she isn’t.”

Because I can smell it now. Power. Dozens of others. Layered. Tangled. Thrumming under her skin like storm currents waiting for the lightning strike. The pit goes still and the crowd shifts into an eager murmur.

Rafe spreads his arms theatrically. “For your third and final bout-the girl who keeps surviving when she shouldn’t.”

1/3

17:14 Thu, Jan 1 M

Chapter 169

ས ཛཱ, 15)

He snaps his fingers. The opposite gate opens. A warlock steps through-tall, draped in dark fabric, runes inked across his arms, eyes glowing faintly with active magic. He studies Allison with a thoughtful, assessing tilt of his head.

Evander stiffens. “Oh hell no. She can’t-”

But something in Allison’s posture changes. Her shoulders roll back. Her chin lifts. Her breath steadies. Yeah, my girls got this.

Evander

I’ve seen her siphon before. I’ve watched her collapse with too much magic burning through her veins, watched her tremble under the weight of powers she

didn’t know how to carry, watched her panic and beg her own body not to split itself in half. But this-this is not that. She stands in the pit like she’s carved

from quiet violence, like every instinct in her is reaching upward, outward, toward a version of herself she once had to become just to keep breathing.

There’s no panic. No hesitation. No fear. Just readiness. The warlock lifts a hand, murmuring a spell that lights the runes along his skin in molten gold.

Allison doesn’t flinch. Magic hits her-a sharp, slicing bolt meant to test, to warn, to shake her balance-and it dissolves against her skin like it hit water

instead of flesh. The crowd erupts and my mouth goes dry.

Kael inhales sharply beside me. “She didn’t siphon that.”

I shake my head once. “No.”

She didn’t need to. Because she is already full, carrying magic from everyone she touched before we fled the Academy. A vampire’s speed. A dragon’s heat. A hellhound’s instincts. A warlock’s raw spellwork. The faint hum of shifters and witches and fae, all tangled together like threads in a tapestry she never meant to weave. The warlock tries again-this time sending a shockwave that cracks the pit floor. Allison steps through it. Not around. Not back. Through. Her hand snaps upward, faster than I’ve ever seen, catching the wave mid-air and crushing it like brittle glass as it fractures into harmless dust around her

fingers. The warlock freezes.

Kael mutters, “Oh, he’s fucked.”

And Allison moves.

Kael

It happens too fast for the crowd to follow. One second she’s standing still, the next she’s crossing the space between them with a speed that would shame half the hellhounds I grew up fighting beside. She ducks under the warlock’s next spell, rolls along the sand, springs upward with a feral grace that reminds me of every wilderness story she never bothered telling us. She jabs. He blocks. She feints. He stumbles. She fights like a creature built for the edges of civilisation-where rules don’t matter, where technique becomes instinct, where life is decided by split-second choices and the refusal to die. She fights like she was born in the dark. I watch her dodge a bolt of magic by a hair’s breadth, pivot on the ball of her foot, slam her palm into the warlock’s sternum hard enough that the spell he was forming breaks apart with a flash of wild energy. Her eyes burn. Not with rage but with focus. Sharp, terrifying focus. The warlock snarls something ancient, slamming his staff into the floor, sending a burst of magic upward like a geyser-but Allison leaps, twisting through the air with a serpentine grace, landing behind him before he even realises she’s moved. Her arm snakes around his throat. Her knee drives into his spine. Her grip tightens with deadly precision. He collapses to one knee, and Evander exhales a trembling sound I’ve never heard from him. My own pulse stutters because there is nothing hesitant in her movement, nothing self-conscious, nothing uncertain. All the softness Thornhill tried to teach her-gone. All the fear they drilled into her-burned away. This is Allison. This is who she had to become to stay alive in the wilderness. And gods, it is beautiful.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify