Beneath the shadows of her hood, Nesta could sense Clotho’s gaze lingering upon her. The pen moved again.
Not many will come, I am afraid.
“I know. But even one or two … I’d like to offer.” Nesta gestured to a pillar beyond Clotho. “I’ll put a sign-up sheet there. Whoever wants to join is welcome.”
Again, that long stare from beneath the hood, its weight like a phantom touch.
Then Clotho wrote, Whoever wants to join has my blessing.
Nesta pasted the sign-up sheet onto the pillar that day.
No one had inked their name on it by the time she departed.
She awoke early, made the trek to the library to check the list, and found it still empty.
“It’ll take time,” Cassian consoled her when he read whatever lay etched on her face as she stepped into the training ring. He added a shade softly, “Keep reaching out your hand.”
So Nesta did.
Every afternoon when she arrived at the library, she checked the list. Every evening when she left, she checked it as well. It was always empty.
At training, Cassian began to instruct her on basic footwork and body positioning in hand-to-hand combat. No punches or kicks, not yet. Nesta held that infernal plank for ten seconds. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Thirty.
Cassian added weights to her exercises, in order to build up her flimsy arms. Heavy stones with carved handles to carry while she did her lunges and squats.
All while she breathed and breathed and breathed.
She tried the stairs again. Made it to step five hundred before her muscles demanded she turn around. The next night, she halted on six hundred ten. Then seven hundred fifty.
She didn’t know what she’d do at the bottom: find a tavern or a pleasure hall and drink herself stupid, she supposed. If she made it, she’d deserve it, she told herself with each step.
At night, exhaustion weighed so heavily she could barely eat and bathe before tumbling into bed. Barely read a chapter of a book before her eyelids drooped. She’d found a smutty novel she’d already read and loved in one of the trunks Elain had packed, and had laid it on the desk.
She’d said to the air, “I found this for you. It’s a present.” The book had vanished into nothing. But in the morning, she’d found a bouquet of autumnal flowers upon her desk, the glass vase bursting with asters and chrysanthemums of every color.
A week passed, during which she barely saw Gwyn, though she learned through Clotho that Merrill had been pushing her hard with the Valkyrie research. But Nesta had so many books to shelve that the hours passed swiftly.
Especially once she began using the books to train. While striding up the ramp, she’d hold a heavy stack and execute an assortment of lunges. Several times, she caught passing priestesses a level above peering at her while she did so.
Every day, she checked the sign-up sheet on the pillar beyond Clotho’s desk. Empty.
Day after day after day.
Keep reaching out your hand, Cassian had told her.
But what would it matter, she began to wonder, if no one bothered to reach back?
“You hold your fist like that when you punch someone and you’ll shatter your thumb.”
Panting, with sweat running down her back in great rivers, Nesta scowled at Cassian. She held up the fist he’d ordered her to make, her thumb inside her folded fingers. “What’s wrong with my fist?”
“Keep your thumb atop the knuckles on your pointer and middle finger.” He made a fist to demonstrate and wiggled the thumb tucked against his fingers. “If your thumb makes the hit, it’s going to hurt like hell.”
Studying the fist Cassian extended, Nesta mimicked the positioning on her own hand. “What then?”
He jerked his chin. “Get into the position we went over yesterday. Feet parallel, rooting your strength into the ground …”
“I know, I know,” Nesta muttered, and took up the stance he’d spent three days making her practice. She observed her feet as they shuffled into position, then she bent her knees slightly, bobbing twice to make sure she’d secured her center of power.
Cassian circled her. “Good. Any punch you make should be swift and precise, not a wild swing that’ll knock you off balance and deprive your arm of strength. Your body and breath will power the punch more than your actual arm.” He took up a similar stance—and struck at the air.
He moved so smoothly, so brutally, that the blow was done before she could blink.
He held out his arm when he’d finished, muscles shifting. He’d rolled up his sleeves against the warm autumn day, but hadn’t taken his shirt off entirely. In the stark sunlight, the tattoo along his left arm seemed to drink down the brightness. “Line up the first two knuckles with your forearm. That’s what you want to hit with, and the strength in your arm will carry right through to them. If you hit with your ring finger and pinky, you’ll break your hand.”