Learning swordplay was no easy task—it required repetition and muscle memory and patience—but Nesta, Emerie, and Gwyn were game.
No, Cassian realized as he watched them put away their swords in the icy rain that continued the next day. They were more than game: they trained with a newfound, steady focus. No one more so than Nesta, who now shelved her sword and took up a length of linen. She began wrapping her hands, rolling her neck as she did so.
They hadn’t spoken after the blacksmith lesson yesterday afternoon, though she’d thanked him quietly upon returning to the House of Wind. She’d had that intensity upon her face again, eyes distant—as if focusing on some invisible target. So he hadn’t sought her out last night, even though every part of him had screamed to do so. But he’d give her time. Let her initiate when she was ready. If she wanted him again.
Cassian shut down the thought. Allowed the icy rain to cool his desire, his dread.
In silence, Nesta approached the punching block, a fallen tree trunk that had been wrapped in thick blankets. She approached it as if she were facing an opponent.
She glanced over her shoulder to Cassian as she stopped before it, a question in her eyes.
He nodded. “You want to use the last fifteen minutes to spar, go ahead.”
That was all she needed, and he was too pleased to say more as Nesta took up her fighting stance and began punching.
The first impact of her knuckles against the padded wood hurt. But she hit where she was supposed to, and her thumb remained where she’d made it learn to stay, and when she pulled her arm back, the pain became a song. She threw another punch, eliciting a satisfying thunk from the wood.
Good—it felt good. To get it out, to channel it this way.
Her breathing was sharp as a blade, but she threw a left hook, then two jabs of her right fist.
She didn’t feel the rain, didn’t feel the cold.
Every punch carried her fear, her rage, her hate out of her body and into that wood.
For three days, she’d had fire in her blood. For three days, she had dreamed of swords and stairs and combat. She couldn’t stop it. Had fallen into bed so tired that she had no chance to even read before she was unconscious. There certainly had been no sex with Cassian. Not even a smoldering glance over the dining table.
Azriel’s presence helped. He now trained the newest recruits, quiet and gentle yet unfaltering, and if she didn’t know better, she’d swear at least two of the priestesses—Roslin and Ilana—sighed every time he walked past.
Some small, awful part of her was glad they didn’t sigh over Cassian. She punched that thought out of herself, too. That pathetic, selfish thought.
Just as all of her was pathetic, and selfish, and hateful.
One-two, two-one-one; she punched and punched, throwing all of herself into the wood.
“By the Cauldron,” a familiar male voice said beside Cassian, and he turned to find Lucien in the archway to the training area. The rest of the priestesses and Azriel had left ten minutes earlier. Nesta hadn’t even noticed. “Feyre said she was training, but I hadn’t realized she was … well, training.”
Cassian nodded his hello, keeping his eyes on Nesta where she punched the padded wood over and over, just as she had for the last twenty-five minutes straight. She’d gone into a place Cassian knew too well—where thought and body became one, where the world faded to nothing. Working something out from deep inside of herself. “Did you think she was filing her nails?”
Lucien’s mechanical eye clicked. His face tightened as Nesta threw a spectacular left hook into the wood beam. It shuddered with the impact. “I wonder if there are some things that should not be awoken,” he murmured.
Cassian cut him a glare. “Mind your own business, fireling.”
Lucien just watched Nesta attack, his golden skin a little pale.
“Why are you here?” Cassian asked, unable to help the sharpness. “Where’s Elain?”
“I am not always in this city to see my mate.” The last two words dripped with discomfort. “And I came up here because Feyre said I should. I need to kill a few hours before I’m to meet with her and Rhys. She thought I might enjoy seeing Nesta at work.”
“She’s not a carnival attraction,” Cassian said through his teeth.
“It’s not for entertainment.” Lucien’s red hair gleamed in the dimness of the rainy day. “I think Feyre wanted a progress assessment from someone who hasn’t seen her in a while.”
“And?” Cassian bit out.