A Court of Ashes and Daybreak

Cassian

Nesta was struggling. She ran well, with good technique, but she was starting to look like she might pass out. She was so thin! I never realised quite how painfully slim she'd gotten since she moved to the night court. She needed to stop, it was worse than not running at all to push someone too far when they weren't ready. I slowed beside the stairway that led down to the rest of the house of wind, calling for Nesta to halt. She kept her head high, but there was relief in her eyes that made me feel like an absolute bastard. It was almost killing me to watch her suffer, even if I did like winning against her.

"What did you have for breakfast?" I asked, glancing at her too-thin frame. It reminded me of Feyre when she first arrived here with Rhys. It cut deep to think that the night court could be hurting Nesta in the same way the spring court hurt Feyre. No, I told myself. Rhys isn't Tamlin. You aren't Tamlin. But nothing could've prepared me for her answer.

"I didn't have breakfast."

"You didn't have breakfast!" I was horrified. How was she still on her feet!? Missing breakfast was like, well, I didn't know what missing breakfast was like. There was nothing else in the world as bad as missing breakfast.

"I didn't have time. Plus, I wasn't hungry. What's the big deal?" Nesta sounded both cross and slightly confused.

"Food is important!" I found myself almost shrieking, "And you can't expect to build up muscles if you have no energy stored to build them with, and breakfast, breakfast!! Breakfast is necessary for human function! Breakfast is, effectively, life! How can you have a good day if you didn't have a good breakfast??"

Nesta just looked at me like I was crazy.

"Right. You are coming with me right now and you are going to eat breakfast. And then, every day from now on, you are going to eat breakfast before you come to training. All right?"

"If I said no, you would still drag me down there and stand over me until I forced down every single mouthful, so, alright."

I led her down through the house of wind, to the room next to the study where Rhys held his war councils. Rhys had fitted it out with a kitchen, for when I got hungry and couldn't be bothered to fly all the way to my apartment for food. Rhys was a clever male. He knew that a hungry Cassian was not something anyone wanted to contend with. I had to agree with him.

The fridge and cupboards were stocked with food, and I grabbed a frying pan of the draining board. I rifled through the fridge, returning triumphantly with a box of eggs, a packet of bacon, a tub of mushrooms and a packet of tattie scones. I lit the cooking fire, thanking Rhys in my head for the spelling on the stove that made it heat up faster than most.

Nesta watched dispassionately as I fried eggs, bacon, mushrooms and scones.

"Where did you learn to cook?" she asked, surprising me. She'd never taken so much as the slightest interest in my life before.

"I mostly taught myself," I answered, "I never kept servants and I reckon if you're going to get hungry a lot you might as well learn to cook."

I tipped most of the food onto her plate, turfing the remainder onto a plate for myself. (Hey, second breakfasts were good.) She sat quietly at the small table and picked over it with a fork. I slumped down myself, grabbing my cutlery, and lost myself in the feeling of good, hot food.

I realised that Nesta was staring at me halfway through my second piece of bacon. I raised a quizzical eyebrow at her, mouth too full to speak. "I'm torn between being disgusted and impressed," she said, "You eat like you've never seen food before, yet, judging from your reaction outside, you've already eaten breakfast?"

I swallowed with difficulty, and motioned towards her plate, "Your food'll get cold if you don't eat up." She rolled her eyes and returned to chewing her microscopically small mouthfuls. I scraped my fork around my now empty plate, standing and dumping it, along with the frying pan, in the sink. I returned to the table moments later with a loaf of bread, butter and a pot of jam. Nesta just looked at me, sighed and went back to eating.

After forcing Nesta to eat several slices of bread and jam, we returned to the training rings on the rooftop. Nesta seemed in a better mood after her food, and a pink flush had returned to her cheeks. "So when do you go running? You said you'd already been this morning," she asked.

"I go every morning. I get up at six."

"So you can fit in all that breakfast eating?" she teased, eyes sparkling, "Oh but wait no, it takes you the same amount of time to eat breakfast as everyone else, it's just you consume twice as much actual food by stuffing your face like a pig." I glared at her, but I couldn't stop a grin spreading across my face, "Stop fat shaming me, Nesta." She smirked but I continued, "I know you like your men chubby..." I dodged to escape her slap, grinning.

I fitted Nesta out with a light sword, and set up two training dummies whilst she changed into her fighting leathers. They were tall poles wrapped in leather stuffed with straw, their surfaces scuffed and scarred from many hours of practice and many warriors trained. I showed Nesta the basic moves and left her to practice, heading over to the other dummy myself.

I went through the moves I'd known ever since I started training, more than 500 years ago in that cold and lonely Illyrian camp, and still the sound of sword hitting leather brought back those memories; memories from a time when I thought I would be lucky to make it to a foot soldier, let alone the commander of an army. I had been so uncertain then, although I'd learnt enough in my then short and violent life not to show it. I had pretended that I knew that I would be as good with a sword as I was with my fists, the only weapons I'd fought with until the commander first placed a sword in my hand. I remembered that sword, the worst of the bunch, slightly bent to the left, and so heavy the teenage me could hardly keep the point off the ground. And I remembered, bittersweet, how Rhysand had drawn the sword his father had given him for his birthday, how it had gleamed in the light like a blade of lightning. But how, when I swung my bent and battered blade, I left my awkward teenage body and became a flowing machine of death. How Rhys' sword went flying from his hand the first day he faced me in the ring. I smiled softly, swinging my sword over, round, undercut, stab, backhand, over and over.