Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 179

Chapter 179

Cassian

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When the treeline finally shatters open and the battlefield beneath it sprawls into view like a wound carved across the earth, the first thing I see, is not the bodies, not the chaos, not the blood steaming against the cold ground, but her… or rather, the thing she has become, the thing she held caged beneath her skin. The wraith stands at the center of the clearing as if she were the eye of some ancient storm, shadows rippling from her body in long, sinuous ribbons that curl and recoil like living creatures tasting the air; her veins glow with stolen magic that pulses beneath her skin like constellations rearranging themselves, and her eyes burn with a hunger so old it makes even my war-tempered instincts flinch. I have seen horrors crafted by generals and spells engineered to unmake the mind, but nothing, nothing has ever struck me silent the way she does in this moment. I am built for combat. The war saw to

that. I learned long ago how to break an army with nothing but a whisper-how to fold fear into a blade sharp enough to cut a man from the inside out-but

watching her now, a creature of instinct rather than training, a weapon crafted not by discipline but by survival itself, I finally understand that all my power,

all my precision, all my carefully curated lethality is pale beside the wild, untamed brilliance of what she has become.

I don’t have time to stand there marvelling, though. Rhaziel doesn’t even look at me when he orders, voice thick with ancient power, “Cassian. Protect the

boys.” He doesn’t have to. My body moves before thought can catch it, because Evander and Kael are barely upright, their blood staining the ground in dark

strokes that make my chest tighten with something dangerously close to panic. A basilisk shifter slithers from the underbrush, scales gleaming like tarnished

metal, venom already gathering in its throat. I lift a single hand, tilt it ever so slightly, and whisper the idea of death into its mind-not a threat, not a

vision, but a certainty so absolute its nerves seize beneath the weight of it. The creature collapses; convulsing violently as it tries to outrun a fate that

hasn’t happened yet but feels real enough to kill. A banshee streaks overhead, her scream poised to split the air, but I fold her voice back into her skull,

trapping her in her own silence, and she drops to the ground with a strangled, breathless gasp. A gremlin-warlock hybrid lunges forward, runes blazing along

his arms, claws reaching for my throat; I let him see his spine snapping in three distinct places, let him feel the pain of it echo through every nerve he

owns, and he collapses mid-air, writhing as if trying to harvest the agony from his own bones.

Kael watches with wide eyes. “Remind me to never piss you off.”

“You already do,” I reply, though my attention is pulled helplessly, inevitably back to her.

Because even while I’m dismantling enemies without lifting a blade, the true carnage is happening on the other side of the clearing, where the wraith and the demon king fight in terrifying synchrony. She moves like nightmare incarnate, like the wilderness shaped her heartbeat to its own rhythm; she vaults onto the shoulder of a shifter twice her weight, tears the magic from his core with a touch, lands in a crouch, and sends a ripple of force through the earth that topples three gargoyles before they can take to the sky. A witch charges; she pivots with the effortless grace of instinct sharpened by desperation, catches her wrist, and siphons so brutally she crumples before she realises she is dying. This is pure, feral survival honed into something more fearsome than any academy-crafted talent. And Rhaziel-damn him-keeps pace with her perfectly. Their shadows intertwine, coil, expand, shrinking and surging like twin storms collapsing into one another. They strike in tandem, move in mirrors, breathe as if sharing lungs,

I should be jealous. I should be enraged by how seamlessly she aligns with him. But the truth is far simpler and far crueller: I am awed. Awed by her. Awed by this. Awed by the realisation that everything I thought she needed was nothing but my own arrogance. She never required shaping. She needed space. She needed freedom. She needed to stop running from the thing she is. A wyvern swoops low, jaws wide, I tilt my head. You forgot how to fly. The thought buries itself in its mind, its wings snap shut, and it plummets like a stone, screaming until its voice breaks.

Evander whispers, “Holy hell.”

Kael mutters, “That’s not very holy at all.”

The battlefield shifts. I feel it like a tightening in the air or a held breath. The last few enemies scatter back into whatever place they crawled out from, too afraid to face death today. And then she turns, not the wraith, but her. The shadows peel from her skin like mist evaporating in sunlight. The black drains from her eyes. Her magic settles. Her breathing slows. She becomes Allison again-exhausted, trembling, utterly devastating in her humanity. Rhaziel reaches her first, and she folds into him with a sound that is nothing like the creature she was moments before. It is small, raw and painfully relieved. She kisses him once, holding his hands tenderly with a small smile. Then she breaks away, staggers toward Kael and Evander, touches their faces with shaking hands, checks their wounds, whispers words that quiet the tremble in Kael’s jaw and soften the terror in Evander’s eyes. She tends to each of her mates with such care and love that my heart cracks a little at the sight of what I wish I had when it was offered to me.

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17:21 Thu, Jan 1 ở

Chapter 179

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And then she turns and walks toward me. Each step is careful, fragile almost, as if she’s unsure of her own limbs now that the storm has passed. Shadows still cling to bet in thin, fading ribbons. Magic hums beneath her skin like a second heartbeat. She stops an arm’s length away and looks up, meeting my eyes with a steadiness that steals mine.

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