Chapter 1
The cold was a blade. It slid under the door of the barracks, pried at the hide flaps of the tents, and found the thin places in a mortal-born woman’s resolve. It was why Nesta was out here, in the blue-black heart of the Illyrian night, when any sane creature was huddled by a fire.
Sleep was a country she couldn’t find on a map. It had been that way for weeks, ever since they’d dragged her to this frozen wasteland of peaks and pines, this glorified camp perched on the edge of the world. The silence here was different from the silence of her father’s cavernous, empty house. That had been the quiet of loss. This was the quiet of held breath, of predators waiting in the dark.
Her boots crunched on the frost-silvered ground, the sound unnaturally loud in the pre-dawn stillness. The training ring, a circle of packed earth and ice, was deserted. A few weapons racks stood like skeletal sentinels, their steel glinting faintly with starlight. Beyond the camp’s edge, the mountains sawed at the sky, their jagged teeth chewing on the last of the darkness.
Rage, cold and sharp as the air in her lungs, was a familiar companion. It was a fire that gave no warmth, only burned. Rage at the King of Hybern. Rage at the Cauldron that had Unmade her. Rage at this powerful, alien body she didn’t know how to command, a prison of graceful limbs and senses too sharp for her own sanity. She could hear the slow, deep breathing of warriors in the nearest tents, the shift of a wing, the distant cry of some night-hunting bird. It was all too much.
She stalked to the nearest rack, her hands clumsy in their thin leather gloves. Her fingers closed around the hilt of a practice sword. It was heavy, brutally so, the balance all wrong in her grip. She lifted it, the muscles in her arm screaming in protest, and tried to imitate the forms she’d seen the Illyrians practice. A swing, a clumsy parry against an imagined foe. The blade sliced through the air with a pathetic, wheezing sound. Her feet slipped on a patch of ice, and she stumbled, catching herself before she fell.
Useless. Utterly, damnably useless. A hot prickle of shame burned behind her eyes, and she hated it more than the cold. She would not cry. She would not.
A low sound cut through the silence. Not a word, just a rough exhalation of breath.
Nesta froze, her back rigid. She didn’t have to turn to know who it was. The air had changed, grown heavier, charged with a heat that had nothing to do with fire.
Cassian stood at the far edge of the ring.
He wasn’t training, not anymore. He was just watching her. He wore only the loose, dark Illyrian pants, his broad chest and scarred arms bare to the wind. Steam rose from his skin as if from a forge, the heat of his Fae body warring with the bitter cold. His dark hair was mussed, and the shadows under his eyes were stark in the growing light. He looked like he hadn’t slept either. Like he’d been out here for hours, trying to beat back his own demons with the burn of exertion.
His Siphons were dark, two midnight-blue cabochons on the back of his hands, inert. But she could feel the power coiled within him, a sleeping beast that the slightest disturbance might wake.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The wind sighed through the pines, carrying the clean, sharp scent of snow. He didn’t mock her. He didn’t speak. He just watched, his hazel eyes unreadable across the frozen ground. The silence stretched, thick and fraught, until Nesta felt her own skin prickle. She wanted to tell him to go away, to leave her to her pathetic fumbling. She wanted to throw the sword at his stupid, handsome face. But the words wouldn’t come. They were frozen in her throat.
Slowly, deliberately, he began to walk toward her. His steps were silent on the ice-crusted earth, the movements of a predator. He didn’t stop until he was only a few feet away, close enough that she could feel the heat rolling off his body, a tangible wave in the frigid air. It was a stark, almost violent contrast to the cold clinging to her own skin.
“You’re holding it like a club,” he said. His voice was a low rasp, roughened by the cold or by disuse.
Nesta’s chin lifted. “I hadn’t noticed.”
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth, gone as quickly as it came. “I did.”
He didn’t wait for an invitation. She knew he wouldn’t. He moved around her, his steps so light she barely heard them, and came to a stop directly behind her. Her entire body went rigid. He was so close. Too close. The heat of his chest was a physical presence at her back, a promise of warmth she furiously told herself she didn’t need. His scent filled her head—pine and snow and something uniquely, infuriatingly him. Something like ozone after a lightning strike.
She expected a rough hand, an impatient shove to correct her stance. It’s what she’d seen him do with the other warriors, his corrections swift and brutally efficient.
But the touch, when it came, was nothing like that.
His left hand settled on her waist, his fingers barely brushing the fabric of her tunic. It wasn’t a hold, not really. It was a suggestion, a point of anchor. Even through the layers of her clothing, the touch was a brand. Her breath hitched.
“Your feet,” he murmured, his voice low and close to her ear. “Wider. You need a foundation, or the first real blow will send you flying.”
She obeyed, her limbs feeling stiff and disconnected. She shuffled her feet apart, the crunch of snow loud in the charged silence. He made a low sound of approval. Then, his other hand came up. He didn’t grab the sword. He didn’t grab her.
His fingers, calloused and warm, closed over her own frozen hand on the hilt of the sword.
The world narrowed to that single point of contact.
His touch was so careful, so achingly controlled, it was a physical blow. She could feel the rough texture of his warrior’s palm against the back of her knuckles, the strength in his fingers as he gently, so gently, re-curled her own around the leather-wrapped grip. He shifted her thumb, adjusted the angle of her wrist. Each movement was deliberate, measured, as if he were handling something impossibly fragile. As if he were afraid she might shatter.
“Don’t choke it,” he said, his breath a warm cloud beside her cheek. “Let it be an extension of your arm. Feel the balance point.” He guided the blade in a slow, graceful arc, and for the first time, it didn’t feel like a clumsy length of steel. It felt… alive.
Nesta couldn’t breathe. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. All she could feel was the solid wall of his chest against her back, the heat of him seeping into her, chasing away the bone-deep chill. She could feel the steady, powerful beat of his heart through his ribs and her own thin tunic. It was a slow, relentless rhythm, the polar opposite of her own panicked flutter.
Her exhalation plumed in the dark air, a white flag of surrender. She had to fight every instinct in her body, every raw, desperate nerve ending, not to lean back. Not to sag against him and steal a moment’s warmth, a moment’s strength. To do so would be to admit a weakness she couldn’t bear. To admit that she wanted this, that she wanted *him* to be the one standing behind her in the dark.
“Like this?” she managed to ask, her voice thin and tight.
“Better.”
He didn’t let go. His hand remained over hers, his fingers a warm cage. His other hand was still a ghost at her waist. He was a furnace at her back, a shield against the wind and the darkness and the crushing weight of her own fear. And in the absolute stillness of the moment, a terrifying thought surfaced: this felt more real than anything she had experienced since the Cauldron had spat her out. This solid, warm presence. This careful, reverent touch.
He was so still, she wondered if he was even breathing. She could feel the tension humming through him, a fine, high wire of control. He was holding himself back, she realized with a jolt. This gentleness was a monumental effort, a restraint so profound it was its own kind of violence. He wanted to do more than correct her grip. He wanted… what? To pull her back against him? To wrap his arms around her and hold on? The thought sent a tremor through her.
Slowly, as if moving through water, he released her. The loss of his heat was immediate and brutal, a physical shock. The cold rushed back in, twice as sharp as before. He took a single step back, and the space between them crackled with everything unsaid.
Nesta stood frozen, her knuckles white on the sword’s hilt, her back still tingling where he’d stood. She didn’t turn around. She couldn’t. She stared out at the jagged peaks, now edged with the first pale, pearlescent light of dawn.
“Try again,” Cassian said, his voice once more rough and distant.
She lifted the sword. This time, it felt different. The weight was familiar, the grip solid. She swung, putting the fury and the shame and the terrifying, unwanted flicker of warmth into the blow. The blade cut the air with a clean, sharp whistle that echoed in the silence of the waking mountains.