Azriel rolled his eyes but didn’t deny it.
Nesta watched the shadowsinger with a frankness that most people shied from. Azriel returned the look with a stillness that most people ran from.
Even Feyre had been hesitant around Az initially, but Nesta considered him with the same unflinching assessment she laid upon everyone.
Maybe that was why Azriel had never said a bad word about Nesta. Never seemed inclined to start a fight with her. She saw him, and was not afraid of him. There weren’t many people who fit that bill.
Nesta said, “Show me how you two fight.” Azriel blinked, but she added, “I want to know what I’m up against.” When neither of them said anything, she asked, “What I saw in battle was different, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Cassian said. “A variation of what we do here, but it requires a different sort of fighting.” Shadows clouded her eyes, as if the memory of those battlefields haunted her. He said, “We won’t start battle training for a while yet.” Years, probably. Az was watching her as if he, too, had marked the shadows in her eyes. Cassian asked him, “You want to do a little sparring? It’s been a while since I wiped the floor with you.”
He needed to get the energy out—the lingering, addling desire from last night. Needed to burn it from his body through movement and breath.
Az rolled a shoulder, unruffled and calm, eyes glittering as if he marked Cassian’s need to expel that coiled-up energy. But Az peeled off his jacket and his shirt, leaving the Siphons atop the backs of his hands, anchored in place around the wrist and through a loop on his middle finger. Cassian did the same as he removed his own shirt.
Nesta’s stare seared him from across the ring. Cassian might have flexed his stomach muscles as he approached the chalk-lined circle. Az shook his head and muttered, “Pathetic, Cass.”
Cassian winked, nodding to his brother’s equally muscled stomach. “Where have you been exercising these days?”
“Here,” Azriel said. “At night.” After he returned from spying on their enemies.
“Can’t sleep?” Cassian took up a fighting stance.
A shadow curled around Azriel’s neck, the only one brave enough to face the sunlight. “Something like that,” he said, and settled into his own stance across from Cassian.
Cassian let it drop, knowing Az would have told him already if he’d wanted to share what had been hounding him enough to exercise at night, rather than in the morning with them. Cassian explained to Nesta, who stood a few feet outside the chalk ring, “We’ll go full speed, then stop, and I’ll break it down for you. All right?”
He needed to expunge this energy before he’d dare let himself be that close to her.
Nesta crossed her arms, face so neutral he wondered for a moment if he’d dreamed some wild fantasy last night of his head between her legs.
Shaking off the thought, he again looked to Az. Their eyes met, Az’s face as unreadable as Nesta’s, and Cassian gave a nod. Begin.
It started with footwork: a slow circling, an assessment, waiting for the other to reveal his first move.
Cassian knew Az’s tricks. Knew which side Az favored and how he liked to strike.
The problem was, Az knew all of his techniques and shortcomings, too.
They circled each other again, Cassian’s feet pounding a steady beat on the dry ground.
“Well?” he asked Az. “Why don’t you show me what all that nighttime brooding has resulted in?”
Az’s mouth curved. He refused to take the bait.
The sun beat down on them, warming Cassian’s bare skin and hair.
“Is this really all it is?” Nesta asked. “Circling and taunting?”
Cassian didn’t dare look her way. Not even for an instant. As soon as he so much as blinked at her, Azriel would strike, and strike hard. But—
Cassian grinned. And glanced toward Nesta.
Az fell for his deception, launching toward him at last.
Cassian, waiting for it, met the fist Az sent flying for his face, blocking and deflecting and counterstriking. Az caught the blow, ducked the second Cassian had waiting, and aimed one for Cassian’s exposed ribs.
Cassian blocked, counterpunched, and then the sparring unfolded.
Fists and feet and wings, punch and block, kick and stomp, breath sawing out of them as he and Az tried to break past each other’s defenses. Neither of them put the full force of their bodies into the blows—not the way they’d do in a real brawl, when one punch could shatter a jaw. But they used enough power to make Cassian’s ribs bleat at the impact, to make Az whoosh out a breath as Cassian landed a lucky hit to his stomach. Az was spared from having the air knocked out of him by twisting, otherwise the fight would have ended right then and there.