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.

1/4

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.

2/4

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.

3/4

20:36 Thu, Jan 15

Thornhill Academy

Don’t Leave Me

Allison

:

17

28

Darkness presses in from every direction. Not empty darkness. Not quiet. It’s crowded. Too many thoughts stacked on top of one another, scraping and colliding, looping back on themselves until I can’t tell where one ends and the next begins. The cage hums. Not a sound, exactly, but a pressure. A constant vibration that rattles through bone and shadow alike. My shadows pace the bars without my permission, clawing, tasting, recoiling, surging again. I feel them like extra limbs I never asked for. I feel everything too much. The world is too close. Too loud. Too hungry. They’re there. All of them. Right outside the cage. I can see them through the distortion, through the veil of power and static and wrongness that coats everything I look at. Evander sits stiff-backed, arms folded tight, eyes never leaving me. Kael paces like a caged animal himself, restless and coiled. Rhaziel stands apart, shadows obeying him in a way mine refuse to obey me.

Cassian-

Cassian hurts to look at because the bond pulls at him constantly, a tight, aching thread that feels like it’s sawing through my chest from the inside out. He’s right there. Close enough that I could reach him if the bars weren’t here. Close enough that my shadows slam against the cage every time he moves. And Cage. He’s seated at the table, slumped forward slightly, one hand braced against the stone. Half his face is a mess of stitches, darkened with blood that hasn’t quite stopped seeping through. The other half is pale, drawn tight with pain. His head is bowed, but I can feel him. The bond between us is faint, frayed, but there. A thin, aching thread that hums whenever he breathes, whenever his heart stutters and insists on continuing anyway. My shadows curl toward him without permission, testing the bars, reacting to him like a wound they recognise as their own..

They’re talking. Planning. All of them Their words reach me warped and bent, meaning distorted by the hunger roaring through my veins. Relic. Council. Route. Time. They’re deciding who leaves first. Like I’m already gone.

***

Cassian

I keep my posture controlled, hands folded on the table in front of me, even as every instinct he has screams at me to move closer to the cage. Allison hasn’t stopped pacing since Rhaziel locked it. Bare feet on stone. Shadowed claws scraping against metal that was never meant to hold something like her. Every few seconds, the bars rattle as another lash of power snaps outward.

“She can’t stay like this indefinitely,” Evander says quietly. “Even contained, the magic is escalating.”

“She’s escalating,” Kael snaps back. “That thing inside her is riding her like a damn wave.”

I flinch when Allison snarls, the sound sharp and feral, shadows surging in response. I don’t blame her. I can feel the distortion in the bond, the way her thoughts are there but tangled, wrapped in something ravenous that doesn’t differentiate between threat and tether.

“We don’t have the relic here,” Evander continues. “Which means someone has to go get it.”

Allison’s head snaps up.

***

1/4

Don’t Leave Me

Allison

༩