“And there has been no help for her?”
“I am not privy to that information. I know of the resources available to us, but it is not my business whether Riven has utilized them.” From the worry that now etched Gwyn’s face, Nesta knew she had used those services. Or had at least tried.
Gwyn tucked her hair behind her arched ears. “I meant to find you yesterday to thank you again for switching out that book, but I got tied up with Merrill’s work.” She inclined her head. “I’m in your debt.”
Nesta rubbed at a persistent cramp in her thigh. “It was nothing.”
Gwyn noted the movement. “What’s wrong with your leg?”
Nesta gritted her teeth. “Nothing. I’m training every morning with Cassian.” She had no idea if Gwyn knew of him, so she clarified, “The High Lord’s general—”
“I know who he is. Everyone knows who he is.” It was impossible to read Gwyn’s face. “Why do you train with him?”
Nesta brushed a clump of dust off her knee. “Let’s just say that I was presented with several options, all designed to … curb my behavior. Training with Cassian in the morning and working here in the afternoon was the most palatable.”
“Why do you need to curb your behavior?”
Gwyn truly didn’t know—about what a horrible, wretched waste she’d become. “It’s a long story.”
Gwyn seemed to read her reluctance. “What manner of training is it? Combat?”
“Right now, it’s a whole lot of balancing and stretching.”
She nodded toward Nesta’s leg. “Such things are painful?”
“They are when you’re as out of shape as I am.” A pathetic weakling.
Two more priestesses passed by, and apparently the presence of one of them was enough to send Gwyn launching to her feet. “Well, I should be getting back to Merrill,” she declared, any trace of solemnity gone. She nodded to the drop into the pit. “Don’t go looking for trouble.”
Gwyn turned on her heel, blue flashing in her hand.
The sight of that blue made Nesta blurt, “Why don’t you wear that stone on your head like the others?”
Gwyn pocketed the gem. “Because I don’t deserve to.”
“Is this really all we’ll be doing?” Nesta demanded the next morning in the training ring as she rose from what Cassian had called a curtsy-squat. “Balance and stretching?”
Cassian crossed his arms. “So long as you keep having shit balance, yes.”
“I don’t fall that often.” Only every few minutes.
He motioned for her to do another squat. “You still keep your weight on your right leg when you stand. It opens up your hip, and your right foot rolls slightly to the side. Your entire center is off. Until we correct that, you’re not starting anything more intense, no matter how nimble you are on your feet. You’d only injure yourself.”
Nesta puffed out a breath as she did another squat, her right leg sweeping out behind her left as she ducked low. Fire quivered along her left thigh and knee. How many curtsies had she practiced under her mother’s sharp eye? She’d forgotten they were this demanding. “Like you stand so perfectly.”
“I do.” Unflinching arrogance laced every word. “I’ve been training since I was a child. I was never given the chance to learn how to stand incorrectly. You have twenty-five years of bad habits to break.”
She rose from the squat, legs shaking. She had half a mind to call in their bargain and order him to never make her do another squat again. “And you truly enjoy this endless exercising and training?”
“Two more, and then I’ll tell you.”
Grumbling, Nesta obeyed. Only because she was tired of being as weak as a mewling kitten, as he’d called her several nights ago.
When she was done, Cassian said, “Get some water.” The midmorning sun beat down on them relentlessly.
“I don’t need you to tell me when to drink,” she snapped.
“Then go ahead and faint.”
Nesta met his hazel stare, the no-nonsense face, and drank the water. To stop her head spinning, she told herself. When she’d gulped down a glass, Cassian said, “I was born to an unwed female in a settlement that makes Windhaven look like a tolerant, welcoming paradise. She was shunned for bearing a child out of wedlock, and forced to give birth to me alone in a tent in the dead of winter.”
Horror lurched through her. She’d known Cassian was low-born, but that level of cruelty because of it … “What of your father?”
“You mean the piece of shit who forced himself on her and then went back to his wife and family?” Cassian let out a cold laugh that she rarely heard. “There were no consequences for him.”
“There never are,” Nesta said coolly. She blocked out the image of Tomas’s face.
“There are here,” Cassian growled, as if he sensed the direction of her thoughts. Cassian gestured to the city below, hidden by the mountain and the House blocking the view. “Rhys changed the laws. Here in the Night Court, and in Illyria.” His face hardened further. “But it still requires the survivor to come forward. And in places like Illyria, they make life a living hell for any female who does. They deem it a betrayal.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“We’re all Fae. Forget the High Fae or lesser Fae bullshit. We’re all immortal or close to it. Change comes slowly for us. What humans accomplish in decades takes us centuries. Longer, if you live in Illyria.”
“Then why do you bother with the Illyrians?”
“Because I fought like hell to prove my worth to them.” His eyes glittered. “To prove that my mother brought some good into this world.”
“Where is she now?” He’d never spoken of her.
His eyes shuttered in a way she had not witnessed before. “I was taken away from her when I was three. Thrown out into the snow. And in her so-called disgraced state, she became prey to other monsters.” Nesta’s stomach twisted with each word. “She did their backbreaking labor until she died, alone and …” His throat worked. “I was at Windhaven by then. I wasn’t strong enough to return to help her. To bring her somewhere safe. Rhys wasn’t yet High Lord, and none of us could do anything.”
Nesta wasn’t entirely certain how they’d wound up speaking of this.
Apparently, Cassian realized it as well. “It’s a story for another time. But what I meant to try to explain is that through it all, through every awful thing, the training centered me. Guided me. When I had a shit day, when I was spat on or pummeled or shunned, when I led armies and lost good warriors, when Rhys was taken by Amarantha—through all of that, the training remained. You said the other day the breathing helped you. It helps me, too. It helped Feyre.” She watched the wall rise in his eyes, word after word. As if he waited for her to rip it down. Rip him down. “Make of that what you will, but it’s true.”
Oily shame slithered through her. She’d done that—brought this level of defensiveness to him.
Heaviness weighed on her. Started gnawing on her insides.
So Nesta said, “Show me another set of movements.”