2_-_court_of_mist_and_fury_a_-_sarah_j._maas

CHAPTER
30
Cassian might have been cocky grins and vulgarity most of the time, but in the sparring
ring in a rock-carved courtyard atop the House of Wind the next afternoon, he was a
stone-cold killer.
And when those lethal instincts were turned on me …
Beneath the fighting leathers, even with the brisk temperature, my skin was slick with
sweat. Each breath ravaged my throat, and my arms trembled so badly that any time I so
much as tried to use my fingers, my pinkie would start shaking uncontrollably.
I was watching it wobble of its own accord when Cassian closed the gap between us,
gripped my hand, and said, “This is because you’re hitting on the wrong knuckles. Top
two—pointer and middle finger—that’s where the punches should connect. Hitting here,”
he said, tapping a callused finger on the already-bruised bit of skin in the vee between my
pinkie and ring finger, “will do more damage to you than to your opponent. You’re lucky
the Attor didn’t want to get into a fistfight.”
We’d been going at it for an hour now, walking through the basic steps of hand-to-hand
combat. And it turned out that I might have been good at hunting, at archery, but using my
left side? Pathetic. I was as uncoordinated as a newborn fawn attempting to walk.
Punching and stepping with the left side of my body at once had been nearly impossible,
and I’d stumbled into Cassian more often than I’d hit him. The right punches—those were
easy.
“Get a drink,” he said. “Then we’re working on your core. No point in learning to
punch if you can’t even hold your stance.”
I frowned toward the sound of clashing blades in the open sparring ring across from us.
Azriel, surprisingly, had returned from the mortal realm by lunch. Mor had intercepted
him first, but I’d gotten a secondhand report from Rhys that he’d found some sort of
barrier around the queens’ palace, and had needed to return to assess what might be done
about it.
Assess—and brood, it seemed, since Azriel had barely managed a polite hello to me
before launching into sparring with Rhysand, his face grim and tight. They’d been at it
now for an hour straight, their slender blades like flashes of quicksilver as they moved
around and around. I wondered if it was as much for practice as it was for Rhys to help his
spymaster work off his frustration.
At some point since I’d last looked, despite the sunny winter day, they’d removed their
leather jackets and shirts.