“Would you believe that Rhys, Az, and I had to climb up and down them as punishment when we were boys?”
Her eyes shimmered with temper—good. Better than the vacant ice. “Why?”
“Because we were young and stupid and testing boundaries with a High Lord who didn’t understand practical jokes regarding public nudity.” He nodded toward the stairs. “I got so dizzy on the hike down that I puked on Az. He then puked on Rhys, and Rhys puked all over himself. It was the height of summer, and by the time we made the trek back up, the heat was unbearable, we all reeked, and the scent of the vomit on the stairs had become horrific. We all puked again as we walked through it.”
He could have sworn the corners of her mouth were trying to twitch upward.
He didn’t hold back his own grin at the memory. Even if they’d still had to hike back down and mop it all up.
Cassian asked, “What stair did you make it to?”
“One hundred eleven.” Nesta didn’t rise.
“Pathetic.”
Her fingers pushed into the floor, but her body didn’t move. “This stupid House wouldn’t give me wine.”
“I figured that would be the only motivator to make you risk ten thousand stairs.”
Her fingers dug into the stone floor once more.
He threw her a crooked smile, glad for the distraction. “You can’t get up, can you.”
Her arms strained, elbows buckling. “Go fly into a boulder.”
Cassian pushed off the wall and reached her in three strides. He wrapped his hands under her arms and hauled her up.
She scowled at him the entire time. Glared at him some more when she swayed and he gripped her tighter, keeping her upright.
“I knew you were out of shape,” he observed, stepping away when she’d proved she wasn’t about to collapse, “but a hundred steps? Really?”
“Two hundred, counting the ones up,” she grumbled.
“Still pathetic.”
She straightened her spine and raised her chin.
Keep reaching out your hand.
Cassian shrugged, turning toward the hall and the stairwell that would take him up to his rooms. “If you get tired of being weak as a mewling kitten, come to training.” He glanced over a shoulder. Nesta still panted, her face flushed and furious. “And participate.”
Nesta sat at the breakfast table, grateful she’d left her room soon after sunrise to make the trek up to the dining room.
It had taken her double the time it normally would, thanks to her stiff, throbbing legs.
Getting out of bed had required gritted teeth and a litany of cursing. Everything afterward had only gotten worse. Bending to put her legs into her pants, going to the bathroom, even just heaving open the door. There wasn’t one part of her legs that didn’t ache.
So she’d left her room early, not wanting to give Cassian the satisfaction of seeing her limp and grimace into the dining room.
The problem, of course, was that now she wasn’t entirely certain she could stand.
So she’d taken a good, long while eating her meal. Was choking down the porridge when Cassian prowled through the dining room doors, took one look at her, and smirked.
He knew. Somehow, the swaggering asshole knew.
She might have snapped something, but Azriel stalked into the room on his heels. Nesta straightened at the shadowsinger’s appearance, the darkness clinging to his shoulders as he offered her a grim smile.
Azriel was nothing short of beautiful. Even with those scarred hands and the shadows that flowed from him like smoke, she’d always found him to be the prettiest of the three males who called themselves brothers.
Cassian slid into the chair opposite hers, his food instantly appearing before him, and said with grating cheer, “Morning, Nesta.”
She threw him an equally saccharine smile. “Good morning, Cassian.”
Azriel’s hazel eyes danced, but he said nothing as he gracefully took his place beside Cassian, a plate of his own food appearing.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Nesta said to him. She couldn’t remember the last time, actually.
Azriel took a bite of his eggs before replying. “Likewise.” The shadowsinger nodded toward her clothes. “How’s training?” Cassian cut him a sharp look.
Nesta glanced between them. There was no way Azriel didn’t know about yesterday. Cassian had probably gloated about the incident with the stairs, too.
She sipped from her tea. “Training is fantastic. Absolutely riveting.”
Azriel’s mouth curled up at the corner. “I hope you’re not giving my brother a hard time.”
She set down her teacup. “Is that a threat, Shadowsinger?”
Cassian took a long drink from his own tea. Drained it to the dregs.
Azriel said coolly, “I don’t need to resort to threats.” The shadows coiled around him, snakes ready to strike.
Nesta gave him a smile, holding his stare. “Neither do I.”
She leaned back in her chair and said to Cassian, who was frowning at both of them, “I want to train with him instead.”
She could have sworn Cassian went still. Interesting.
Azriel coughed into his tea.
Cassian drummed his fingers on the table. “I think you’ll find that Az is even less forgiving than I am.”
“With that pretty face?” she crooned. “I have a hard time believing that.”
Azriel ducked his head, focusing on his food.
“You want to train with Az,” Cassian said tightly, “then go ahead.” He appeared thoughtful for a moment, his eyes lighting before he added, “Though I doubt that you’ll survive a lesson with him, when you can’t manage to walk down a hundred stairs without being so sore the next morning that you’re unable to get out of your chair.”
She braced her feet on the floor. He’d read every tinge of pain on her face if she stood, but letting him see he was right—
Azriel studied the two of them as she planted her hands on the table, bit down on her yelp, and stood in a great rush.
Cassian shoveled more eggs into his mouth and said around them, “Doesn’t count when you use your hands to do most of the work.”
Nesta schooled her face into utter disdain, even as a hiss rose inside her. “I bet that isn’t what you’ve been telling yourself at night.”
Azriel’s shoulders shook with silent laughter as Cassian set down his fork, his eyes gleaming with challenge.
Cassian’s voice dropped an octave. “Is that what those smutty books teach you? That it’s only at night?”
It took a heartbeat for the words to settle. And she couldn’t stop it, the heat that sprang to her face, her glance at his powerful hands. Even with Azriel now biting his lip to keep from laughing, she couldn’t stop herself.
Cassian said with a wicked smile, “It could be anytime—dawn’s first light, or when I’m bathing, or even after a long, hard day of practice.”
She didn’t miss the slight emphasis he put on long, hard.
Nesta couldn’t stop her toes from curling in her boots. But she said with a slight smile, striding for the doorway, refusing to let one bit of the discomfort in her sore legs show, “Sounds like you have a lot of time on your hands, Cassian.”
“You’re in deep shit,” Azriel said mildly to him on the chilly veranda as Nesta donned her cloak inside.
“I know,” Cassian muttered. He had no idea how it had happened: how he’d gone from mocking Nesta to taunting her with his own bedroom habits. Then imagining her hand wrapped around him, pumping him, until he was a heartbeat away from exploding out of his chair and leaping into the skies.
He knew Az had been well aware of the shift in his scent. How his skin had become too tight at the way she said his name, his cock an insistent ache rubbing against the buttons of his pants.
He could count on one hand the number of times she’d addressed him by name.
The thought of that one hand led him back to her hand, squeezing him ro
ugh and hard, just the way he liked it—
Cassian gritted his teeth and breathed in the crisp morning air. Willed it to settle him. Made himself focus on the morning wind’s sweet song. The wind around Velaris had always been lovely, gentle. Not like the vicious, unforgiving mistress that ruled the peaks of Illyria.
Az chuckled, the wind shifting the strands of his dark hair. “You two need a chaperone up here?”
Yes. No. Yes. “I thought you were the chaperone.”
Az threw him a wicked smile. “I’m not entirely sure I’m enough.”
Cassian flipped him off. “Good luck today.”
Az would leave soon to begin his spying on Briallyn—Feyre had decided it last night. Though Rhys had asked Cassian to look into the human queens, the subterfuge would fall to Az.
Azriel’s hazel eyes glimmered. He squeezed Cassian’s shoulder, his hand a warm weight against the chill. “Good luck to you, too.”
Cassian didn’t know why he’d thought Nesta would enter the sparring ring with him today. She sat her ass right on the same rock as the day before and did not move.
By the time Mor had appeared to winnow them to the camp, he’d managed to get enough control over himself that he’d stopped thinking about what Nesta’s hands would feel like and started considering what they’d cover today. He’d planned to keep the lesson to an hour, then leave her at Rhys’s mother’s old house while he did a standard check of the Illyrian war-bands’ state of rebuilding their ranks.
He wouldn’t mention that they might be flying into battle soon, depending on what Az learned.
He didn’t tell Nesta any of this information, either. Especially about Eris. She’d made her contempt of the Fae realms perfectly clear. And he’d be damned if he gave her one more verbal weapon to wield against him, since she’d likely see right through him and realize he knew all of this political scheming and planning was far beyond his abilities.
He also didn’t let himself consider whether it was wise to leave her alone up here even for an hour.
“So we’re back to this?” Cassian asked, ignoring how every single asshole in the camp watched him. Them. Her.
Nesta picked at her nails, wisps of her braided hair drifting free in the wind. She’d hunched over her knees, keeping her body as compact as possible.
He said, “You’d stop being so cold if you got up and moved.”
She only folded one ankle over another.
“If you want to sit on that rock and freeze for the next two hours, go ahead.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“Good one, Nes.” He threw her a mocking grin that he knew made her see red, and strode to the center of the practice area. He halted in its heart, allowing his breathing to take over.
When she didn’t reply, he let himself fall into that calm, steady place within his mind, let his body begin the series of motions he’d performed for five centuries straight.
The initial steps were to remind his body that it was about to start working. Stretching and breathing, concentrating on everything from his toes to the tips of his wings. Waking everything up.
It got harder from there.
Cassian yielded to instinct and movement and breath, only dimly aware of the female watching from that rock.
Keep reaching out your hand.
Cassian was breathless by the time he finished an hour later. Nesta, to his satisfaction, had become rigid with cold.
But she hadn’t moved. Hadn’t even shifted during his exercises.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, he noted that her lips had taken on a blue tinge. Unacceptable.
He indicated Rhys’s mother’s house. “Go wait in there. I have business to attend to.”
She didn’t move.
Cassian rolled his eyes. “Either you sit out here for the next hour, or you can go inside and warm up.”
She wasn’t that stubborn—was she?
Thankfully, a blast of icy wind hit the camp at that exact moment, and Nesta began moving toward the house.
Its interior was indeed warm, with a fire crackling in the sooty hearth that occupied much of the main room. Feyre or Rhys must have woken the house for them. He held the door for Nesta as she walked in, already rubbing her hands.
Slowly, Nesta surveyed the space: the kitchen table before the windows, the little sitting area that occupied the other half of the room, the narrow staircase that led to the exposed upstairs hallway and the two bedrooms beyond. One of those rooms had been his since childhood—the first bedroom, the first night indoors, he’d ever experienced.
This house was the first true home he’d ever had. He knew every scratch and splinter, every dent and burn mark, all of it preserved with magic. There, the gouged-out spot by the base of the railing—that was where he’d cracked his head when Rhys had tackled him during one of their countless brawls. There, that stain on the old red couch: that was when he’d spilled his ale while the three of them were drunk out of their minds on their first solo night in this house at age sixteen—Rhys’s mother had been off in Velaris for a rare visit to her mate—and Cassian had been too stupid drunk to know how to clean it. Even Rhys, swaying with the combination of ale and liquor, had failed to lift the stain, his magic accidentally setting it instead of wiping it away. They’d rearranged the throw pillows to hide it from his mother when she returned the next morning, but she’d spied it immediately.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that they’d still been drunk, given away by Az’s relentless hiccupping.
Cassian nodded to the kitchen table. “Since you’re so good at sitting, why don’t you make yourself comfortable?”
When she didn’t answer, he turned to find Nesta standing in front of the hearth, arms tightly crossed, the flickering light dancing in her beautiful hair. She didn’t look up at him.
She’d always stood with that stillness. Even as a human. It had only amplified when she’d become High Fae.
Nesta stared at the fire as if it murmured to that burning soul of hers.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
She blinked, seeming to realize he was still there.
A log on the fire popped, and she flinched.
Not in surprise, he noted, but in dread. Fear.
He glanced between her and the fire. Where had she gone, for those few moments? What horror had she been reliving?
Her face had blanched. And shadows dimmed her blue-gray eyes.
He knew that expression. Had seen it and felt it so many times he’d lost track.
“There are some shops in the village,” he offered, suddenly desperate for anything to remove that hollowness from her. “If you don’t feel like sitting in here, you could visit them.”
Nesta still said nothing. So he let it drop, and left the house in silence.
CHAPTER
9
Nesta stepped into the warmth of the small shop. The bell above the door jangled as she entered.
The floors were fresh pine, all polished and gleaming, a matching counter occupying the back, an open door beyond it revealing a rear room. Clothes for both males and females occupied the space, some displayed on dummies, others folded neatly along display tables.
A dark-haired female appeared on the other side of the counter, her braided-back hair shining in the lights. Her face was striking—elegant and sharp, contrasting with her full mouth. Her angular eyes and light brown skin suggested a heritage from another region, perhaps a recent ancestor from the Dawn Court. The light in those eyes was direct. Clear.
“Good morning,” the female said, her voice solid and frank. “Can I help you?”
If she recognized Nesta, she didn’t let on. Nesta gestured down at her fighting leathers. “I was looking for something warmer than this. The cold leaks through.”
“Ah,” the female said, glancing toward the door and the empty street beyond. Worried that someone might see her in here? Or waiting for another customer? �
�The warriors are all such proud fools that they never complain about the leathers being cold. They claim they keep them perfectly warm.”
“They’re decently warm,” Nesta confessed, part of her smiling at the way the female had said proud fools. As if she shared Nesta’s instinct to be unimpressed by the males in the camp. “But the cold still hits me.”
“Hmmm.” The woman folded back the partition on the counter, entering the showroom proper. She surveyed Nesta from head to toe. “I don’t sell fighting gear, but I wonder if we could get fleece-lined leathers made.” She nodded toward the street. “How often do you train?”
“I’m not training. I’m …” Nesta struggled for the right words. Honestly, what she was doing was being a wretched asshole. “I’m watching,” she said a shade pathetically.
“Ah.” The female’s eyes glinted. “Brought here against your will?”
It was none of her business. But Nesta said, “Part of my duties to the Night Court.”
She wanted to see if the female would pry, to see if she really did not know her. If she would judge her for being a miserable waste of life.
The female angled her head, her braid slipping over the shoulder of her simple, homespun gown. Her wings twitched, the motion drawing Nesta’s eye. Scars ran down them—unusual for the Fae. Azriel and Lucien were two of the few who bore scars, both from traumas so terrible Nesta had never dared ask for details. For this female to bear them as well—
“My wings were clipped,” the female said. “My father was a … traditional male. He believed females should serve their families and be confined to their homes. I disagreed. He won, in the end.”
Sharp, short words. Rhys’s mother, Feyre had once told her, had nearly been doomed to such a fate. Only the arrival of his father had stopped the clipping from occurring. She’d been revealed as his mate, and endured the miserable union mostly from gratitude for her unharmed wings.
No one, it seemed, had been there to save this female.
“I’m sorry.” Nesta shifted on her feet.
The female waved a slim hand. “It’s of no consequence now. This shop keeps me busy enough that some days I forget I could ever fly in the first place.”
A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses) Page 10
