Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 205

Chapter 205

Cage

Dawn arrives without mercy. It spills through the skeletal branches in hard, thin slashes of white-gold light, cutting across the frost bitten forest floor like blades instead of warming anything. It’s the kind of morning that feels sharp, cold and uncomfortable. Maybe that’s fitting, to feel like shit, it’s the kind of motivation I need, because today is the day I try to break away from the people who think they own me. I move before anyone else stirs. I try to stay silent and controlled-a shadow among shadows. Every instinct drilled into me since childhood takes over: stay quiet, stay small, stay unseen. The pack on my shoulders feels heavier than it should, like it somehow knows I’m not coming back with it. My breath fogs in the icy air, dissipating like every lie I ever told myself-lies about loyalty, about purpose, about who the hell I am supposed to be. Don’t think about her. But the command is useless, because she is everywhere. In the shape of the trees. In the cold that clings to my skin. In the throb behind my ribs that refuses to dull. Allison. Is. Alive. Not torn apart by predators or taken by the wilderness. Not a corpse on the forest floor like they insisted she must be. Alive.

And because she’s alive, the world feels tilted under my feet. Nothing fits. Nothing holds. Nothing feels survivable unless I get away-get across that wall- get to where the bond keeps tugging me in soft, relentless pulls, like a heartbeat echoing through a long, dark tunnel. I spent the entire night drifting in

and out of shallow, frantic sleep. Every time my eyes closed, the nightmares came.

Her-small, filthy, shivering-wandering alone through forests like these, clutching herself for warmth, hunted by things with sharp teeth.

Her-hiding from Council soldiers, breath held until her lips turned blue.

Her-sleeping beside cold streams, body fragile, magic flickering like a dying spark.

Her-alone in places no child should ever have survived.

And threaded through every nightmare was the bond. The bond I’d been trying to ignore for too long. It had been muted and numb, sealed behind walls I built out of guilt and fear. But last night when I let myself feel it again… it cracked open like something desperate and wild. Sorrow poured through it. A kind of quiet, aching grief that wasn’t mine. A grief that had lived in her for years, buried so deep it had become part of her bones. It nearly brought me to

my knees.

So now I walk. I move through the enforcers’ camp with a clarity I haven’t felt in years, threading between sleeping bodies and lazy patrols like a ghost slipping through its own graveyard. Ten steps. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven steps of freedom. Thirty-seven steps of cold air in my lungs, of hope sharpening in my chest-until the universe reminds me exactly what I am.

“Going somewhere, Cage?”

I freeze.

The commander stands behind me, arms crossed, the early light catching on the metal studs of his uniform. Two enforcers flank him, two towering shadows

carved out of loyalty and cruelty. For fuck’s sake.

I turn slowly, burying every tell in my expression. “Checking perimeter,” I lie, smooth as oil. “There was a gap in patrols, so I decided to take a shift.”

The commander laughs, a sound like a blade skimming bone.

“Oh, listen to you,” he sneers. “Talking like you give orders now.”

He steps closer, and I focus all my effort on not scowling or spitting at his feet. His breath smells like metal and bitter herbs, like every rule he’s ever forced

someone to swallow.

“You know,” he says, voice dipped low and smug, “it’d be easier if you just admitted where you were going.”

1/2

Chapter 205

“I told you-

“You were leaving,” he interrupts, savouring it. “Running home to Daddy? Back to the academy? Or

And his grin turns vicious.

were you trying to find that siphon girl’s body again?”

My heart slams so hard against my ribs, I swear something cracks. His eyes light up. He saw it-the flicker I couldn’t be test outs

“I see,” He murmurs, stepping close enough that the cold from his armour seeps through my shirt. “Still hung up on that little monen You see

I keep my mouth shut. Silence is safer. Silence keeps me alive.

“Let me make something perfectly clear,” he whispers, voice coiling like smoke up my spine. “You disobey again, and I will send a report straight to your father.”

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