Roman slides behind me. One hand reaches around my neck and lifts my chin while the other flattens out across my back. I almost jerk away from the surprise of it. Xander is always moving me this way or that while we’re training or putting a reassuring hand on my back. But Roman is different.

“Do not tilt your head to look at your knife as you throw,” he says “Do not curve your spine as you prepare. Keep your eyes where your knife will go. Know where it’s going, and it will go there.”

“I know where it’s going.”

“If you did, you would have dug a hole through that piece of wood by now.”

I don’t laugh. I know he’s not trying to be funny.

“Okay. I got it.”

I expect him to let go of me. He doesn’t. His hands are like ice against me, and I fight a shiver.

“Throw it now.”

I take a deep breath, holding it because I can’t remember how to let it back out again. His hand moves slightly on my back, and I wonder if it’s to distract me.

“That’s your other problem.”

“What?” I let the damn breath out in a rush. My spine tries to fold in, but with Roman’s hand locking my chin in place and the other one pressed along my spine, I can’t do anything but stand up straight, which is of course what he wants.

“Breathing.”

“Everyone knows how to breathe.”

“Not you, apparently.”

Funny. Again, I don’t think he means to be.

“Treat your breathing like a second magic. Pull it in as deep as you can and then release it. Don’t hold it so long that it’s burning you up from the inside out.”

He’s remembering the other night when I mixed magic and rage to the boiling point, when I called on blood magic without meaning to, but if he won’t mention it specifically, neither will I. I breathe, letting it in and out over and over again. I debate telling him the hands on my chin and back are distracting, but instead I focus on breathing past my discomfort, which I’m pretty sure is what he’d tell me to do anyway.

“Now throw the knife. Don’t look anywhere but the target,” he whispers, as if the very sound of his voice might interrupt my breathing. But it’s his breath on my ear that does that. This time I lose the fight and shiver. His hands twitch ever so slightly where they hold me, but he doesn’t pull back.

I tell myself I’d tremble like that if anyone blew out a breath so close to my ear, but his hands feel scalding against me.