A Court of Silver Flames - Sarah J. Maas Page 0,96

hook didn’t so much as bob downward.

“Good,” he said, and turned toward the ramp that would lead him out.

He startled at what he beheld: priestesses stopped along the railings on several different levels, staring toward them. Toward Nesta.

At his attention, they instantly began walking or working or shelving books. But a young priestess with coppery-brown hair—the only one of them with no hood or stone—lingered at the rail the longest. Even from a level below and across the pit, he could see that her large eyes were the color of shallow, warm water. They were wide for a moment before she, too, quickly vanished.

Cassian looked back to Nesta, who met his stare with near-simmering eyes.

“Your right hook was perfect this morning,” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“But not when I watched you in the stacks.”

“I figured you’d correct me.”

Shock and delight slammed into him. She’d moved out of the stacks before she let him do so. Into plain view. So they would all see him teaching her.

He gaped at her.

“You can tell Clotho I won’t need to practice in the library anymore,” Nesta said mildly, and turned back down the row.

She’d known Clotho and the others would never invite him, and never go up to the ring to see what he could do. How he’d teach them. So she’d shown the priestesses what she was learning, day after day. More than that, she’d pissed off Clotho enough that the priestess had ordered him down here.

Where Nesta had used him in a demonstration. Not for herself, but for the priestesses who’d drifted over to watch.

Cassian let out a soft laugh. “Crafty, Archeron.”

Nesta lifted a hand over a shoulder in farewell as she reached her cart.

They’d needed to see it, Nesta realized. What Cassian was like when he taught her. That there was touching, but it was always with her permission, and always professional. Needed to see how he never mocked her, only gently corrected. And needed to see what he’d taught her. Hear him say precisely what she could do with all those punching and kicking combinations.

What the priestesses might learn to do.

But that evening, as Nesta left, the sign-up sheet remained blank.

She looked back at Clotho, who sat at her desk, as she always did, from dawn until dusk.

If the priestess gathered that she’d been played, she didn’t let on. But there was something like sorrow leaking from Clotho, as if she, too, had wanted to see that sheet filled today.

Nesta didn’t know why it mattered. Why Clotho’s sorrow knocked the wind from her, but then Nesta was moving, up through the House to the ten thousand steps.

Perhaps she was good for nothing after all. Perhaps she’d been a fool to think that this trick might convince them. Maybe physical training wasn’t what they required to overcome their demons, and she’d been arrogant enough to assume she knew what they needed.

Down and down the stairs Nesta walked, the walls pressing in.

She only made it to stair nine hundred before she turned around, her steps as heavy as if they’d been weighed with lead blocks.

Nesta was still sweating and breathing hard when she stumbled into her room and found a book on the nightstand. She raised a brow at the title. “This isn’t your usual sort of romance,” she said to the room.

It wasn’t a romance at all. It was an old bound manuscript called The Dance of Battle.

Nesta said, “You can take this one back, thank you.” The last thing she wanted to read at night was some dreary old text about war strategy. The House did no such thing, and Nesta sighed and picked up the manuscript, the black leather binding so age-worn it was butter soft.

A familiar smell drifted to her from the pages. “You didn’t leave this for me, did you?”

The House replied by plopping down a stack of romances, as if to say, This is what I would have chosen.

Nesta peered at the manuscript, full of Cassian’s scent, as if he’d read it a thousand times.

He’d left it for her. Deemed her worthy of whatever lay inside.

Nesta perched on the edge of the bed and thumbed open the text.

It was midnight when she took a break from reading The Dance of Battle and rubbed her temples. She hadn’t put it down, not even to eat dinner at her desk, holding it with one hand while she devoured her stew with the other.

It was astonishing how much of the art of warfare was like the social manipulation her mother had insisted