Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 24

Alone In The Woods.

The beam wobbled beneath my boots, a thin line of wood suspended over a throat of black water. My hands clenched at my sides, knuckles white, breath steadying. One slow foot in front of the other, that was all it took. Centre my balance. Don’t panic. Don’t be the joke. Halfway across, I could feel the dampness in the air. The rune on the tree behind me pulsed like a pale heartbeat. I’d almost made it. Then a shadow fell over the far end of the beam. Cage. One boot planted on the wood, the other braced on the bank. Golden eyes like a predator, grin like a crack of dark light. He leaned forward, fingers hooked

over his knee, and the words poured out, every cutting thing he’d said since I’d arrived multiplied for the crowd.

“Don’t get lost, little stray. Pathetic. Weak. You should just-”

I didn’t give him the satisfaction. “Fuck off,” I said, hard and loud.

His grin widened, wicked and flat. “With pleasure.” He kicked the beam. The world flipped. For a second, everything was slow–motion, a long, terrible arc. 1

felt the beam snap under my weight and the cold hit like a physical punch, a thousand needles at once. It stole the air from my lungs, slammed the breath

right out of me. Pain exploded in my sternum, and my head hit the water hard enough to see stars. Blackness clawed at the edges of my vision. My limbs

went suddenly foreign, heavy and useless. Panic tried to take me, the ice wrapping my ribs, the cold squeezing my throat. I thought, for a fractured, stupid

second, that this was it.

The river didn’t give me a chance to fight. The second I hit, it swallowed me whole and spat me out like I was nothing. The current roared around me,

churning, dragging, spinning me end over end. I tried to kick, tried to claw for the surface, but the water was stronger, colder, hungrier than I could ever be.

Every time I broke the surface, gasping for air, it yanked me under again. Branches whipped past, tangling in my hair, scraping at my arms. Rocks tore at my

knees and shins, bruising me raw. My lungs burned like fire as I fought for one breath, then another, then another. Move, Allison. Don’t you dare quit now. I

twisted, caught sight of something ahead, an overhanging branch dipping low across the torrent. My chest screamed, but I lunged for it, fingers clawing

through air and spray. My hand caught. Bark ripped at my skin as the current tore at my legs, threatening to tear me free. I snarled through clenched teeth, the sound swallowed by the river, and hauled with everything I had left. One arm. Then the other. My nails split against the bark as I dragged myself up,

coughing, heaving water out of my lungs until I collapsed on the muddy bank, shivering and raw. For a long moment, I lay there, cheek pressed against wet

earth, the river’s roar fading into background noise. Every breath rattled, every muscle trembled. But I was alive. Alive, and nowhere near the course

anymore.

I pushed up slowly, wiping water from my eyes. The woods stretched around me in every direction, dark, endless, unfamiliar. No rune–marked path in sight.

No other students. Just trees, shadows, and the knowledge that I was far, far off track. My stomach sank as reality clicked in.

“Perfect,” I muttered hoarsely, forcing myself to my feet. My clothes clung heavily to my skin, my hair plastered to my face. “Fucking perfect.”

Cage hadn’t just tried to humiliate me. He’d thrown me out of the race entirely. And now I was on my own in the woods.

I staggered to my feet, every inch of me dripping, clothes heavy as lead. The river snarled beside me, a black ribbon cutting through the trees.

“Fine,” I muttered, teeth chattering. “You dragged me this far, you can damn well take me back.”

I kept close to the water’s edge, following the current upstream. My boots slipped in the mud, sucking at my steps, but I pressed on. If I followed it long enough, I’d find the broken beam, the rune–marked tree, something. But the forest had other plans. The further I walked, the denser the trees grew, branches clawing at my arms, blocking my path. Roots rose like snakes, tangling my ankles, tripping me until my knees were raw. At one point, the ground itself seemed to shift under me, softening into a swamp that forced me to veer left, away from the water. Every time I tried to push back, the forest pushed harder. Rocks jutted out in impossible walls. Brambles closed off the bank, sharp enough to tear through fabric. The river blurred behind curtains of trees until it was gone altogether, the roar of it distant, fading.

My breath came fast, more from frustration than fear. “Oh, of course,” I hissed into the shadows. “Wouldn’t want the stray to find her way back.”

I shoved through a thicket, branches scratching my face, and found myself in silence. No river. No runes. Just the suffocating press of the woods. The realisation hit me like another punch to the chest.

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