Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 237

Cage

Sitting hurts. Everything hurts, but sitting is worse because it requires coordination I no longer possess. My legs don’t quite listen, and my balance is fucked. I miss the chair entirely on the first attempt and have to catch myself on the edge of the table, breath tearing out of me as pain spikes behind my eye socket like a live wire. Someone shoves the chair back into place.

“Sit,” Rhaziel orders.

I do. Barely. I’m aware of blood still dripping down my chin in slow, sticky trails, splattering dark against the surface between us. I don’t bother wiping it away. There’s no point pretending dignity exists in a room where the girl I love is locked in a cage beside us. Rhaziel steps in front of me. No warning. His claws close around my jaw, rough and unapologetic, forcing my face one way, then the other. I hiss as his grip presses too close to the torn flesh along my cheek.

“I can clean it,” he says, voice flat, clinical. “And I can stitch it. But there is no saving your eye. You will be scarred.”

Kael snorts from somewhere to my left. “I hope it’s a big, fucking ugly scar.”

I don’t even look at him.

“Me too,” I say quietly.

I hope it’s impossible to forget. I hope it pulls every stare. I hope it burns every morning when I wake up. I hope it reminds me, every single day, that I failed her before I ever saved her. Rhaziel releases my face long enough to snap his fingers. A demon appears instantly, kneeling beside the table with a small metal kit clutched in its hands. The smell of antiseptic hits me a second later, sharp and biting. Before I can register the movement, the demon vanishes again, leaving the kit behind like it was never there at all.

“Where are we?” I ask, voice rough

“My realm,” Rhaziel grunts, already opening the kit.

I must react because Evander answers before I can say anything else.

“He marked us,” Evander says evenly. “So we could be here with Allison. It’s the only place strong enough to hold her until we figure out

how to save her.”

“We’re conquests now,” Kael mutters. “And apparently, you somehow earned yourself a place in that.”

I absorb that. Then move on.

“She’s a siphon,” I say.

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20:36 Thu, Jan 15

The Nature of the Host

Kael scoffs. “Obviously.”

28

I glare at him, but Rhaziel grabs my face again before I can say anything sharp, claws bracing my skull as he threads a needle with steady,

practised precision.

“She’s a siphon,” I repeat, louder this time. “Which means her body doesn’t reject dark magic the way it would in anyone else. It doesn’t

act like poison.”

The needle pierces my skin, and white-hot pain detonates behind my ruined eye, blinding and immediate. My breath hisses through clenched teeth, fingers curling hard around the edge of the table as my body jerks on instinct alone. I force it still. I do not flinch. I do not pull away. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. Instead, I bite down and reach inward, past the pain, past the ringing in my skull, into the places where knowledge was carved rather than taught. Any warlock is trained to understand magic deeply, to know its rules and its costs. But I am Varyn D’Altair’s son. For me, that knowledge wasn’t optional. It was beaten in, drilled until it lived in my bones, until theory and survival became the same thing. Every lesson learned was under threat, and every mistake was punished. While every truth was branded into my soul so deeply that even now, bleeding and half-blind, I can summon it without hesitation. Magic doesn’t poison her.

It feeds her.

“It’s acting like fuel,” I continue, forcing the words out between stitches. “Sustenance. Catalyst. Her body isn’t being eaten by it. It’s being

used by it.”

Rhaziel works in silence, claws deft despite their size, stitching closer and closer to the ruined socket. I can feel the tug of thread, the

pressure, the burn.

Cassian leans forward. I don’t need to look at him to feel his attention sharpen.

“So it’s integrating,” he says slowly. “Not degrading.”

“Yes,” I breathe. “Which means killing her won’t solve it, and draining her won’t either. The magic will just regenerate. It’s found a host

that can sustain it.”

Kael exhales sharply. “That’s… deeply fucked.”

“It means we need to give it a different host,” I say.

Rhaziel pauses, and Cassian stills.

“How?” Cassian asks.

“And who,” Kael adds, immediately suspicious. “Because I’m not volunteering and I don’t like the look on your face.”

“It doesn’t have to be a person,” I say.

Rhaziel’s claws press harder into my jaw as he drives another stitch through, closer now, threading the torn skin with brutal efficiency.

Pain spikes so hard my vision flickers.

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20:36 Thu, Jan 15

The Nature of the Host

23

“There are relics,” I continue, breathing carefully through it. “Old and rare, Constructs designed to attract and bind dark magic. They pull it out of a living host and hold it indefinitely.”

“Like a container,” Evander says.

“Like a magnet,” I correct. “It won’t just take it. It will want it.”

Kael snorts. “Great. Where do we get one of those? Pretty sure they’re not on eBay.”

“My father has one,” I say.

The room goes quiet. Even Rhaziel stills for a fraction of a second before resuming his work.

Cassian looks at me like I’ve just handed him a loaded weapon and a map to where it’s buried.

“You’re certain?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say. “He kept it locked away in the council vault as a classified artifact. He called it a failsafe.”

“For what?” Evander asks.

I swallow.

“For people like her.”

The final stitch pulls tight, and Rhaziel releases my face abruptly, stepping back to survey his work. The pain is still screaming, but it’s…

contained now.

“You live,” he says.

I nod once. Then my gaze drifts, unbidden, toward the cage. Towards where her wraith is circling, smirking, waiting for me to go to her.

“But we need to hurry,” I add quietly. “Because the longer it feeds on her, the more it will fight to stay.”

And I don’t know which part of her will win if we wait too long.

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20:36 Thu, Jan 15

Thornhill Academy

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