Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 181

Chapter 181

Allison

The forest is quieter now, but not in a peaceful way…more like the hush that follows a scream, after the echo has finished shaking the world apart. Sunlight filters through the canopy in long, fractured beams, catching dust and smoke still drifting from the fight we left behind. My steps are slower than they should be, my legs heavy, my magic flickering low like a candle walked too far through the wind. Cassian matches my pace without a word. Not pushing me.

Not urging me forward. Not judging my weakness. Just… walking beside me, as if it was always supposed to be like this. After several minutes of silence, he speaks quietly, voice dipping low so anyone around the forest won’t hear.

“If you need to siphon,” he says, glancing at me from the corner of his eye, “you can take from me.”

I stop mid-step, but he doesn’t. He simply slowly turns back toward me, giving me the dignity of choosing the moment.

“I’m not… taking from any of you,” I murmur. “Not right now. You all need your strength. And I-” I swallow. “I won’t drain my mates to stay upright.”

His eyes widen slightly, just enough to tell me how much that word means to him. Mate. He heard it. He felt it, and it changed something in the air between

1. Cassian doesn’t smile. He doesn’t speak. But I feel the shift inside him, as clear as if the wind carried it straight into my ribcage. And yet, he doesn’t

push, doesn’t reach for me, doesn’t crowd the fragile space I’ve offered.

“Understood,” he says softly.

And we keep walking.

We descend toward a thin split in the hillside where a grove is tucked between leaning maples and a fallen birch, its trunk pale as bone. My chest tightens

when I see it. I used to hide here when the world was too loud. I slept in the hollow under the birch when storms rolled through. I buried a stolen blanket

here once. I bled here once. I grew up in places like this.

“How much did you see?” I ask before I can stop myself. “Of my memories.”

Cassian doesn’t hesitate, not for a single moment.

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“Everything.”

The word is a blade slicing along nerves that haven’t healed yet.

“Everything…”Every hungry night. Every bruised morning. Every hill I ran across with blood in my mouth and fear in my throat. Every time I siphoned too hard and I collapsed. Every time I cried and I wiped it away before anyone could see. Every moment I was weak, hurt, small. The vulnerability sweeps through me so sharply I almost trip, and he notices. Of course he notices. I expect to hear the voices of my dragon, or my hellhound that usually crowd my mind in times like these, but I’m surprised when it’s the wraith that pushes forward. He holds your pain. He’s walked your darkness. Yet he still values your

heart.

I don’t yet know what to do with that information. So instead, I say nothing and continue forward.

We reach a cluster of plants with broad, silver-striped leaves and a purple stem that splits in three directions. Lunathorn. Good for internal bleeding. Suitable for bone-mending draughts. I drop to a crouch, fingers brushing the leaves with practised case.

Cassian crouches beside me, his voice low.

“Allison,” he says, and something inside me freezes because I already know what he’s going to speak into the rawness he just peeled open. “You survived things that would have broken most of us. You learned to fight without training. You learned to think without guidance. You kept yourself alive in ways

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Thu, Jah

Chapter 181

that… frankly, I find astonishing.”

I don’t dare breathe.

“And I’m ashamed,” he continues softly, “that I didn’t tell you that earlier. That I couldn’t see it. That I let arrogance blind me to your strength.” He pauses,

as if choosing each word with painful precision. “I will not make that mistake again. And I will tell you every day, if you’ll let me.”

My hands shake over the plants. I pretend it’s exhaustion. It’s not…And I still don’t have the words that feel enough for the sacrifice he has made by coming

after me. We gather what we need and move on.

The path curves toward the dip where the valley town sleeps, quiet in the midday sun. We don’t enter, because Allison Rivers entering a town in daylight is an invitation to disaster. Instead, we skirt close enough to smell woodsmoke and hear distant laughter. Sounds of children, a dog, a life I never belonged to.

Cassian stops at a crooked fence behind a leaning stone house.

“The next ingredient grows here,” he murmurs. “Beside a fruit tree.”

I blink. “How do you…?”

Then I see the apple tree. The one I used to steal from every autumn. I step closer, heart thudding. There’s a curtain twitch inside the house, and instinct spikes hard in my chest. My shadows tremble and my pulse stutters. Cassian’s hand lands gently over mine, where I grip the fence.

“Breathe,” he murmurs.

I do…Slowly. My racing heart settles enough for us to move again. We slip between fence slats, snag three sprigs of frostroot-a pale, icy herb that numbs pain instantly-and Cassian grabs two clean shirts from the washing line with the smooth confidence of someone who has stolen much worse under much

worse circumstances.

“They’ll need these,” he says dryly when I glance at him.

“You’re terrible.”

“You’re injured,” he counters. “Your boys are injured. I will steal whatever I must,”

I don’t argue, because the very act of Cassian providing for our little family…well, that does something to me.

We head north of the village next, where the trees stretch taller, and the air grows cooler. We only make it halfway to the ridge when the underbrush shivers with a low, rattling hiss, and my heart drops. A basilisk shifter. One from the earlier attack. It lunges from the shadows, body half-serpentine, half-human, eyes burning toxic green. I reach for magic out of instinct, pushing past the ache in my bones, preparing to siphon its core before it can strike-

Cassian’s hand snaps around my wrist.

“No.”

The word is sharp enough to cut. He steps forward quickly, placing himself between me and the creature, and then he looks at it. Just looks…A whisper of power slips from him. I can feel it in the air. My own power wants to reach out and take it for ourselves. The basilisk jerks, its muscles seize, and it collapses in a violent, twitching heap, claws gouging into the dirt as if trying to escape a terror I cannot see. Cassian doesn’t blink as the creature whimpers once before going still.

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