Azriel ducked his head, focusing on his food.

“You want to train with Az,” Cassian said tightly, “then go ahead.” He appeared thoughtful for a moment, his eyes lighting before he added, “Though I doubt that you’ll survive a lesson with him, when you can’t manage to walk down a hundred stairs without being so sore the next morning that you’re unable to get out of your chair.”

She braced her feet on the floor. He’d read every tinge of pain on her face if she stood, but letting him see he was right—

Azriel studied the two of them as she planted her hands on the table, bit down on her yelp, and stood in a great rush.

Cassian shoveled more eggs into his mouth and said around them, “Doesn’t count when you use your hands to do most of the work.”

Nesta schooled her face into utter disdain, even as a hiss rose inside her. “I bet that isn’t what you’ve been telling yourself at night.”

Azriel’s shoulders shook with silent laughter as Cassian set down his fork, his eyes gleaming with challenge.

Cassian’s voice dropped an octave. “Is that what those smutty books teach you? That it’s only at night?”

It took a heartbeat for the words to settle. And she couldn’t stop it, the heat that sprang to her face, her glance at his powerful hands. Even with Azriel now biting his lip to keep from laughing, she couldn’t stop herself.

Cassian said with a wicked smile, “It could be anytime—dawn’s first light, or when I’m bathing, or even after a long, hard day of practice.”

She didn’t miss the slight emphasis he put on long, hard.

Nesta couldn’t stop her toes from curling in her boots. But she said with a slight smile, striding for the doorway, refusing to let one bit of the discomfort in her sore legs show, “Sounds like you have a lot of time on your hands, Cassian.”

“You’re in deep shit,” Azriel said mildly to him on the chilly veranda as Nesta donned her cloak inside.

“I know,” Cassian muttered. He had no idea how it had happened: how he’d gone from mocking Nesta to taunting her with his own bedroom habits. Then imagining her hand wrapped around him, pumping him, until he was a heartbeat away from exploding out of his chair and leaping into the skies.

He knew Az had been well aware of the shift in his scent. How his skin had become too tight at the way she said his name, his cock an insistent ache rubbing against the buttons of his pants.

He could count on one hand the number of times she’d addressed him by name.

The thought of that one hand led him back to her hand, squeezing him rough and hard, just the way he liked it—

Cassian gritted his teeth and breathed in the crisp morning air. Willed it to settle him. Made himself focus on the morning wind’s sweet song. The wind around Velaris had always been lovely, gentle. Not like the vicious, unforgiving mistress that ruled the peaks of Illyria.

Az chuckled, the wind shifting the strands of his dark hair. “You two need a chaperone up here?”

Yes. No. Yes. “I thought you were the chaperone.”

Az threw him a wicked smile. “I’m not entirely sure I’m enough.”

Cassian flipped him off. “Good luck today.”

Az would leave soon to begin his spying on Briallyn—Feyre had decided it last night. Though Rhys had asked Cassian to look into the human queens, the subterfuge would fall to Az.

Azriel’s hazel eyes glimmered. He squeezed Cassian’s shoulder, his hand a warm weight against the chill. “Good luck to you, too.”

Cassian didn’t know why he’d thought Nesta would enter the sparring ring with him today. She sat her ass right on the same rock as the day before and did not move.

By the time Mor had appeared to winnow them to the camp, he’d managed to get enough control over himself that he’d stopped thinking about what Nesta’s hands would feel like and started considering what they’d cover today. He’d planned to keep the lesson to an hour, then leave her at Rhys’s mother’s old house while he did a standard check of the Illyrian war-bands’ state of rebuilding their ranks.

He wouldn’t mention that they might be flying into battle soon, depending on what Az learned.

He didn’t tell Nesta any of this information, either. Especially about Eris. She’d made her contempt of the Fae realms perfectly clear. And he’d be damned if he gave her one more verbal weapon to wield against him, since she’d likely see right through him and realize he knew all of this political scheming and planning was far beyond his abilities.

He also didn’t let himself consider whether it was wise to leave her alone up here even for an hour.

“So we’re back to this?” Cassian asked, ignoring how every single asshole in the camp watched him. Them. Her.

Nesta picked at her nails, wisps of her braided hair drifting free in the wind. She’d hunched over her knees, keeping her body as compact as possible.

He said, “You’d stop being so cold if you got up and moved.”

She only folded one ankle over another.

“If you want to sit on that rock and freeze for the next two hours, go ahead.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Good one, Nes.” He threw her a mocking grin that he knew made her see red, and strode to the center of the practice area. He halted in its heart, allowing his breathing to take over.

When she didn’t reply, he let himself fall into that calm, steady place within his mind, let his body begin the series of motions he’d performed for five centuries straight.

The initial steps were to remind his body that it was about to start working. Stretching and breathing, concentrating on everything from his toes to the tips of his wings. Waking everything up.

It got harder from there.

Cassian yielded to instinct and movement and breath, only dimly aware of the female watching from that rock.

Keep reaching out your hand.

Cassian was breathless by the time he finished an hour later. Nesta, to his satisfaction, had become rigid with cold.

But she hadn’t moved. Hadn’t even shifted during his exercises.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he noted that her lips had taken on a blue tinge. Unacceptable.

He indicated Rhys’s mother’s house. “Go wait in there. I have business to attend to.”

She didn’t move.

Cassian rolled his eyes. “Either you sit out here for the next hour, or you can go inside and warm up.”

She wasn’t that stubborn—was she?

Thankfully, a blast of icy wind hit the camp at that exact moment, and Nesta began moving toward the house.

Its interior was indeed warm, with a fire crackling in the sooty hearth that occupied much of the main room. Feyre or Rhys must have woken the house for them. He held the door for Nesta as she walked in, already rubbing her hands.

Slowly, Nesta surveyed the space: the kitchen table before the windows, the little sitting area that occupied the other half of the room, the narrow staircase that led to the exposed upstairs hallway and the two bedrooms beyond. One of those rooms had been his since childhood—the first bedroom, the first night indoors, he’d ever experienced.

This house was the first true home he’d ever had. He knew every scratch and splinter, every dent and burn mark, all of it preserved with magic. There, the gouged-out spot by the base of the railing—that was where he’d cracked his head when Rhys had tackled him during one of their countless brawls. There, that stain on the old red couch: that was when he’d spilled his ale while the three of them were drunk out of their minds on their first solo night in this house at age sixteen—Rhys’s mother had been off in Velaris for a rare visit to her mate—and Cassian had been too stupid drunk to know how to clean it. Even Rhys, swaying with the combination of ale and liquor, had failed to lift the stain, his magic accidentally setting it instead of wiping it away. They’d rearranged the throw pillows to hide it from his mother when she returned the next morning, but she’d spied it immediately.