2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

he does that.”
Amren flicked her fingers and the empty plate vanished from Azriel’s scarred hands. “If
you haven’t been able to train him after all these centuries, boy, I don’t think you’ll make
any progress now.” She straightened the silverware on the vacant place setting before her.
“You don’t—eat?” I said to her. The first words I’d spoken since sitting.
Amren’s teeth were unnervingly white. “Not this sort of food.”
“Cauldron boil me,” Mor said, gulping from her wine. “Can we not?”
I decided I didn’t want to know what Amren ate, either.
Rhys chuckled from my other side. “Remind me to have family dinners more often.”
Family dinners—not official court gatherings. And tonight … either they didn’t know
that I was here to decide if I truly wished to work with Rhys, or they didn’t feel like
pretending to be anything but what they were. They’d no doubt worn whatever they felt
like—I had the rising feeling that I could have shown up in my nightgown and they
wouldn’t have cared. A unique group indeed. And against Hybern … who would they be,
what could they do, as allies or opponents?
Across from me, a cocoon of silence seemed to pulse around Azriel, even as the others
dug into their food. I again peered at that oval of blue stone on his gauntlet as he sipped
from his glass of wine. Azriel noted the look, swift as it had been—as I had a feeling he’d
been noticing and cataloging all of my movements, words, and breaths. He held up his
hands, the backs to me so both jewels were on full display. “They’re called Siphons. They
concentrate and focus our power in battle.”
Only he and Cassian wore them.
Rhys set down his fork, and clarified for me, “The power of stronger Illyrians tends
toward ‘incinerate now, ask questions later.’ They have little magical gifts beyond that—
the killing power.”
“The gift of a violent, warmongering people,” Amren added. Azriel nodded, shadows
wreathing his neck, his wrists. Cassian gave him a sharp look, face tightening, but Azriel
ignored him.
Rhys went on, though I knew he was aware of every glance between the spymaster and
army commander, “The Illyrians bred the power to give them advantage in battle, yes. The
Siphons filter that raw power and allow Cassian and Azriel to transform it into something
more subtle and varied—into shields and weapons, arrows and spears. Imagine the
difference between hurling a bucket of paint against the wall and using a brush. The
Siphons allow for the magic to be nimble, precise on the battlefield—when its natural state
lends itself toward something far messier and unrefined, and potentially dangerous when
you’re fighting in tight quarters.”
I wondered how much of that any of them had needed to do. If those scars on Azriel’s
hands had come from it.