Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 235

Corrupted Cravings

I sag against the chair behind me, breathing hard, pride and fear warring in my chest. Our girl-our monster.

Evander claps my shoulder. “She’s still fighting.”

“Yeah,” I rasp, smirking through the ache. “And we’ll be right here when she wins.” Because that’s us, loyal to the death and ready for

round two if she needs it.

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20:35 Thu, Jan 15

Thornhill Academy

He Cares

Cassian

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When the door seals behind Evander, the sound of Allison’s scream turns muffled and distorted. I tell myself it’s because Cage needs me. That someone had to go and check on him. That I’m thinking clearly. None of that is true. I stay because if I hear any more of her pain, if I feel even one more tremor through the bond, something in me is going to fracture in a way I do not have the luxury to repair. Cage lies where we left him. Someone dragged him out of the worst of it and then thought better of moving him further, as if the ground itself might be safer than anyone’s hands. He’s on his side, one arm twisted beneath him, blood dried black along his temple and jaw. The wound across his face is worse in stillness. In battle, it was chaos, motion, shadows and screaming. Here, under the cold light of the Shadow Realm’s upper chambers, it is surgical in its cruelty. A clean split from brow to cheek, the skin puckered and bloody where the

dark magic burned through. It’s as though something tried to hollow him out from the inside and failed halfway. He’s breathing. That is

the only good thing I can say with certainty.

I kneel beside him and place two fingers on his throat, counting. His pulse is slow, but he is alive… For now.

“Idiot,” I murmur, though there’s no heat in it.

He saved her. That fact sits in my chest like a lead weight. I have replayed the moment a dozen times already, from angles I didn’t even

consciously register at the time. The flick of his eyes. The decision. The way he moved before anyone could stop him, including himself. It wasn’t instinct or magic. It was a choice. I press my palm flat against the stone beside him when my hand starts to shake. Allison is alive because of him. And Allison is what she is now because she refused to let him die. That is the equation brutal, unforgiving, perfectly

balanced.

–

“She’s still fighting,” I whisper, not to Cage but to myself.

I know because I can feel it. The bond is… wrong. Not severed, not gone, just distorted, like sound carried through water. Where Allison used to be warmth and sharpness and impossible defiance, there is now hunger layered over everything else. A pressure. A constant pull, like gravity has doubled and decided to aim directly at my heart. I reach out mentally without meaning to, and pain flares instantly behind my eyes, bright and punishing. I hiss and pull back, clutching my head as nausea rolls through me. That was a mistake…but she didn’t push me out. Something else did. Whatever she is wrapped in now does not care to distinguish between threat and tether.

I sit back on my heels and scrub a hand down my face, smearing fresh blood across dried. Think. That is what I do best. What I have always done best. I teach people how to understand magic not as myth, but as system. Input. Output. Cost. Consequence. This magic has a cost, Dark magic always does. The difference is that Allison did not reject it. She did not burn out under it. She did not decay. Her body adapted. Her soul… accommodated. That is not corruption in the way most people understand it. It is not rot. It is integration. A feedback loop. The siphon takes. The wraith holds. The dark magic feeds. And in return, it gives her exactly what she wants in the moment. Power,

Control, Relief. I swallow hard.

“She didn’t break,” I murmur, the words tasting wrong. “She changed.”

Cage shifts. It’s small and barely noticeable. His fingers twitch once against the stone, and his breath stutters, dragging in a little too sharply, like he’s surfacing from deep water. I’m moving before I finish registering it, hand braced at his shoulder, magic already gathering instinctively despite my better judgment.

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20:35 Thu, Jan 15

He Cares

“Easy,” I say quietly. “Don’t try to be brave. You’ve done enough of that for one lifetime.”

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