“This is torture.” Bracing her hands on her knees, Nesta pointed to the ring. “If you’re so perfect, do everything you just ordered me to do.”
Cassian snorted. “A ten-year-old Illyrian boy could do it in the span of a few minutes.”
“Then do your big, tough male routine.”
He smirked. “All right. You want to mouth off, then I’ll show you my big, tough male routine.”
He slung his shirt off. Tied back his hair.
And this was a different sort of torture. To watch him go through the same exercises, only harder, heavier, faster. To watch the muscles of his stomach ripple, muscles everywhere ripple. To watch sweat glisten and then run down his golden body, over his tattoos, along the eight-pointed star of their bargain on his spine before sliding into the waist of his pants.
But he’d been professional during their lesson. Utterly professional and distant, as if this training ring was sacred to him.
Nesta couldn’t tear her eyes away as he completed his exercises, panting softly. She tried not to wonder if that panting was how he’d sounded last night when he’d pleasured himself.
But Cassian’s hazel eyes were clear. Triumphant.
In another age, another world, he might have been deemed a warrior-god by mortals. After what he’d told her about the monsters he’d put in the Prison, he might very well be considered a great hero in this age. The kind that would one day be whispered about around a fire. People would name their children after him. Warriors would want to be him. A fine warrior would be known as Cassian reborn.
She’d called him a brute.
“What?” Cassian wiped the sweat from his face.
She asked, to distract herself from her thoughts, “Are there truly no female fighting units amongst the Illyrians?” She hadn’t seen any during the war.
His smile faded. “We tried once and it failed spectacularly. So, no. There aren’t.”
“Because Illyrians are backward and horrible.”
He winced. “Have you been talking to Az?”
“Just my observations.”
He untied his hair, the thick, straight locks falling around his face. “The Illyrians … I told you. Progress is slow. It’s an ongoing goal of ours—me and Rhys, I mean.”
“It’s that hard for the females to become warriors?”
“It’s not just the training. It’s running the social gauntlet, too. And then there’s the Blood Rite, which they’d also have to complete.”
“What’s the Blood Rite?”
“What it sounds like.” He rubbed his neck. “When an Illyrian warrior comes into his full power, usually in his twenties, he has to go through the Blood Rite before he can qualify as a full warrior and adult. Would-be warriors from every clan and village get sent in, usually three or four from each—all of them scattered across an area in the Illyrian Mountains. We’re left there for a week with two goals: survival, and making it to Ramiel.”
“What’s Ramiel?” She felt like a child with these questions, but her curiosity got the better of her.
“Our sacred mountain.” He drew a familiar symbol in the dirt: an upward-pointing triangle with three dots above it. A mountain, she realized. And three stars. “It’s the symbol of the Night Court. The Blood Rite always takes place when Arktos, Carynth, and Oristes, our three holy stars, shine above it for one week a year. On the final day of the Rite, they’re directly above its peak.”
“So you hike to the mountain?”
“We kill our way to the mountain.” His eyes had turned hard. “We’re drugged and dumped into the wilderness, with nothing but our clothes.”
“And you have to participate?”
“Once you’re in, you can’t leave. At least until the Rite is over, or you reach the peak of Ramiel. If anyone breaks into the Rite to extract or save you, the law declares that both of you will be hunted down and killed for the transgression. Even Rhys isn’t exempt from those laws.”
Nesta shivered. “It sounds barbaric.”
“That’s not the half of it. A spell is in place so our wings are rendered useless and no magic may be used.” He held up a hand, displaying the red Siphon on its back. “Magic is rare amongst Illyrians, but when it does manifest, it requires Siphons to be controlled, filtered into something usable. But it gives us an advantage over the other Illyrians without it—so the spell levels the playing field. Illyrians do possess magic on one night a year, though: the night before the Blood Rite, when the war-band leaders can winnow the drugged novices into the wilds. Don’t even ask me why that is. No one knows.”
“Azriel can winnow all the time, though.”
“Az is different. In a lot of ways.” His tone didn’t invite further questioning.
“So without the use of magic in the Rite, you kill each other the normal way? Swords and daggers?”
“Weapons are banned, too. At least ones that are brought in from the outside. But you can build your own. You need to build your own. Or else you’ll be slaughtered.”
“By the other warriors?”
“Yes. Rival clans, enemies, assholes seeking notoriety—all of it. In some villages, the higher the kill count, the more glory you bring. The most backward clans claim the slaughter is to thin out the weaker warriors, but I always thought it was a grand waste of any potential talent.” Cassian dragged a hand through his hair. “And then there are the creatures that roam the mountains—ones that can easily bring down an Illyrian warrior with claws and fangs.”
A murky memory surfaced, of Feyre telling her about the horrible beasts she’d once encountered in the region. Cassian went on, “So you’re facing all of that while trying to make your way to Ramiel’s slopes. The majority of the males forget to save enough strength for the end of the week to make the climb. It’s a full day and night of brutal climbing, where one fall can kill you. Most don’t even make it to the base of the mountain. But if they do, the opponent changes. You’re not facing other warriors—you’re pitting yourself, your very soul, against the mountain. It’s usually that fact that breaks anyone who tries to scale it.”
“And what—you make it to the top and get a trophy?”
Cassian snorted, but his words were serious. “There’s a sacred stone atop it. Touch the stone first, and you win. It will transport you out immediately.”
“And everyone else when the week is done?”
“Whoever is left standing is considered a warrior. Where you are when it ends sorts you into one of the three echelons of warrior, named after our holy stars: Arktosian, the ones who don’t make it to the mountain but survive; Oristian, the ones who make it to the mountain but don’t reach the top; and Carynthian, the ones who scale the summit and are considered elite warriors. Touching the stone atop Ramiel is to win the Rite. Only a dozen warriors in the past five centuries have reached the mountain.”
“You touched the stone, I take it.”
“Rhys, Az, and I touched it together, even though we were deliberately separated from each other at the beginning.”
“Why?”
“The leaders feared us and what we’d become. They thought the warriors or beasts would handle us, if we didn’t have each other to lean against. They were wrong.” His eyes glittered fiercely. “What they learned was that we love each other as true brothers. And there was nothing that we wouldn’t do, no one we wouldn’t kill, to reach each other. To save each other. We killed our way across the mountains, and made it through the Breaking—the worst of Ramiel’s three routes to the top—and we won the damn thing. We touched the stone in the same moment, the same breath, and entered the Carynthian tier of warriors.”