Shadowsinger

Chapter 1

Nesta and Cassian were still off cauldron-knows where, doing cauldron-knows what, the scent of their fresh mating bond still lingering in the House, so Azriel was left to train the priestesses alone. Not that training them was bad, he was thrilled that they were learning to fight, but at least when Nesta and Cassian were there, he could focus on teasing them, rather than his own growing desire. He stiffened at the sound of Gwyn's voice behind him,

"Azriel?" And spun quickly to face her, "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you,"

"You didn't, I was just thinking,"

"About?"

"Nothing, don't worry about it. Did you need my help?" He hated the slight dismissiveness of his tone, but he couldn't actually tell her what he had been thinking of, could he? No, he couldn't. She might never want a male like that ever, he couldn't make her think she had to. He wouldn't, she would have to come to him, or he would be grateful for her friendship.

"Yeah, you said we could move on to archery today after warm ups, Cassian hasn't actually started on that at all, we need you to go over everything."

"Oh. Okay, I assumed you'd already been over the basics." She shook her head, and he sighed, gesturing for her to follow, "Is it just you, or are there others?"

"Emerie as well, she's coming." The few moments it took for Emerie to cross the training ring almost left Azriel shuffling on his feet, but when she arrived he was finally able to start the lesson.

Stop being so tense, she thinks something's wrong with you. A shadow whispered in his ear, he wasn't being too tense, was he? Perhaps he was. Cauldron, did she think he didn't like her? Now you're overthinking it. Be normal. He almost snorted, that was easier said than done, but he forced his thoughts away from Gwyn, and towards the bows in front of him.

"The first thing we have to do is to string them, you can't do anything with an unstrung bow, except perhaps hit someone over the head with it, but that's not very effective." Gwyn snickered, and Emerie bit her lip to keep from laughing, "Grab a bow each, not that one, you'll never be able to draw it." He handed Gwyn a smaller bow, the limbs recurved to allow a lighter draw weight, and Emerie grabbed its twin from the rack. "Those have a draw weight of about thirty pounds, but we'll build that up, until you can draw Illyrian war bows."

"What's the draw weight of those?" Gwyn asked, her voice soothing the worry he was still feeling,

"Anything from eighty to one hundred and twenty pounds. Mine is a hundred." Her jaw dropped open,

"You mean, they can be four times as strong as these? These look pretty heavy as they are."

"They will be to start off with, you'll be using a different set of muscles than you're used to, so we'll be able to build it up." He drew their attention to the notches at the ends of the bows' limbs, when the string could sit. "Get one end of the string on the limbs, and set that limb against your ankle, and step through with the other foot." He adjusted their position, grateful that Emerie had figured it out, so that he didn't have to get too close to Gwyn as she corrected herself. "Now, use your foot as leverage to pull the string up to set it in place." He demonstrated with a third bow, smoothly setting the string in place, and both females managed to copy him, grinning when they were each successful.

"I win." Gwyn chuckled, and Emerie narrowed her eyes, managing to string her own bow moments after Gwyn,

"We'll see about that." She retorted, and Azriel smiled, and as they turned back to face him the sun burst into the ring, setting Gwyn's hair burning bright in the morning glow. She was so breathtakingly beautiful that he forgot he was supposed to be teaching. He slowly walked them through each step of shooting, from their stance to the arm guards that they needed to wear to avoid the string slapping against their forearms. Once they had gotten the hang of it, Azriel set them off to practice, keeping an eye on them as he made the rounds to check on the other priestesses.