A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,56

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.

“The soreness does get easier,” Cassian said after a moment, as if he weren’t holding her leg flush to his chest. “Though I have plenty of days when I can barely walk at the end. And after a battle? I need a week to recover from that alone.”

“I know.” His eyes found hers, and she clarified, “I mean—I saw you. In the war.”

Saw him hauled in unconscious, his guts hanging out. Saw him in the sky, death racing at him until she screamed for him, saved him. Saw him on the ground, broken and bleeding, the King of Hybern about to kill them both—

Cassian’s face gentled. As if he knew what memories pelted her. “I’m a soldier, Nesta. It’s part of my duties. Part of who I am.”

She looked back toward the wall, and he lowered her leg before starting on the other. The tightness in that hamstring was unbearable.

“The more stretching you do,” he explained when she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain, “the more mobility you’ll gain.” He nodded toward the rope ladder laid out on the floor of the training ring, where he’d had her run it up and down, knees to chest, keeping within each of the boxes, for five minutes straight. “You’re nimble on your feet.”

“I took dancing lessons as a girl.”

“Really?”

“We weren’t always poor. Until I was fourteen, my father was as rich as a king. They called him the Prince of Merchants.”

He gave her a tentative smile. “And you were his princess?”

Ice cracked through her. “No. Elain was