There would be no trying the stairs tonight. No dreams chased her awake, either.
Nesta slept and slept and slept, though she could have sworn that her door opened at one point. Could have sworn a familiar, beckoning scent filled her room. She reached toward it with a sleep-heavy hand, but it was already gone.
CHAPTER
14
Cassian stood in the training ring, trying not to stare at the empty doorway.
Nesta hadn’t come to breakfast. He’d let it slide because she hadn’t come to dinner, either, but that had been because she’d been passed out cold in her bed. Naked. Or close to it.
He hadn’t seen anything when he’d poked his head into her room—at least, nothing that might have scrambled his mind to the point of uselessness—but her bare shoulder had suggested enough. He’d debated waking her and insisting that she eat, but the House had stepped in.
A tray had appeared beside her doorway, full of empty plates.
As if the House was showing him precisely how much she’d eaten. As if the House was proud of what it had gotten her to eat.
“Good work,” he’d muttered into the air, and the tray vanished. He made a mental note to ask Rhys about it later—whether the House was sentient. He’d never heard his High Lord mention it in five centuries.
Considering the filthy things he’d done in his bedroom, his bathroom—fuck, in so many of the rooms here—the idea of the House watching him … Cauldron boil him alive.
So Cassian had let Nesta sleep through breakfast, hoping the House had at least brought the meal to her room. But it meant he had no idea if she’d show up. She’d made a bargain with him yesterday, and he’d come here today to see if she’d at least meet him. Prove yesterday hadn’t been a fluke.
Minutes dripped by.
Maybe he’d been a fool to hope. To think one lesson might be enough—
Muffled cursing filled the stairwell beyond the archway. Each scrape of boots seemed to move slowly.
He didn’t dare to breathe, not as her cursing grew nearer. Inch by inch. As if it was taking her a long, long time to climb the stairs.
And then she was there, hand braced on the wall, a grimace of such misery on her face that Cassian laughed.
Nesta scowled, but he only said, relief wobbling his knees, “I should have realized.”
“Realized what?” She stopped five feet from him.
“That you’d be late because you’re so sore you can’t climb the stairs.”
She pointed to the archway. “I got up here, didn’t I?”
“True.” He winked. “I’ll let that count as part of your warm-up. To get the muscles in your legs loose.”
“I need to sit down.”
“And risk not being able to get back up?” He grinned. “Not a chance.” He nodded to the space beside him. “Stretches.”
She grumbled. But she got into position.
And when Cassian began to instruct her through the movements, she listened.
Two hours later, sweat poured down Nesta’s body, but the aching had at least ceased. You need to get the lactic acid out of your muscles—that’s what’s hurting you, Cassian had said when she’d complained nonstop for the first thirty minutes. Whatever the hell that meant.
She lay on the black mat, panting again, taking in the cloudy sky. It was a good deal crisper than yesterday, with tendrils of mist wandering past the ring every now and then.
“When do I stop being sore?” she asked Cassian breathlessly.
“Never.”
She turned her head toward him, about as much movement as she could manage. “Never?”
“Well, it gets better,” he amended, and moved down to her feet. “May I?”
She had no idea what he was asking, but she nodded.
Cassian lightly wrapped his hands around her ankle, his skin warm against her foot, and lifted her leg upward. She hissed as a muscle along the back of her thigh shrieked in protest, drawing so tight she gritted her teeth. “Breathe into it when I push the leg toward you,” he ordered.
He waited until she exhaled before he lifted her leg higher. The tightness in her thigh was considerable enough that she stopped thinking about his callused, warm hands against her bare ankle, about how he knelt between her legs, so close she turned her head away to stare at the red rock of the wall.
“Again,” he told her, and she exhaled, winning another inch. “Again. Cauldron, your hamstrings are tight enough to snap.”
Nesta obeyed, and he kept stretching her leg upward, gaining inch after inch.