She wound her way up the stone stairs toward what had once been the great hall, then a ballroom in later years. And was now their training room.
She stopped short when she saw Larkin’s cousin Moira doing chest extensions with five-pound free weights.
The Geallian wore her brown hair back in a thick braid that reached her waist. Sweat dribbled down her temples, and more darkened the back of the white T-shirt she wore. Her eyes, fog gray, were staring straight ahead, focused, Blair assumed, on whatever got her through the reps.
She was, by Blair’s gauge, about five-three, maybe a hundred and ten pounds, after you’d dragged her out of a lake. But she was game. Having game held a lot of weight on Blair’s scale. What Blair had initially judged as mousiness was, in actuality, a watchfulness. The woman soaked up everything.
“Thought you were still in bed,” Blair said as she stepped inside.
Moira lowered the weights, then used her forearm to swipe her brow. “I’ve been up for a bit. You’re wanting to use the room?”
“Yeah. Plenty of room in here for both of us.” Blair walked over, selected ten-pound weights. “Not hunkered down with the books this morning.”
“I…” On a sigh, Moira stretched out her arms as she’d been taught. She might have wished her arms were as sleek and carved with muscle as Blair’s, but no one would call them soft any longer. “I’ve been starting the day here, before I use the library. Usually before anyone’s up and about.”
“Okay.” Curious, Blair studied Moira as she worked her triceps. “And you’re keeping this a secret because?”
“Not a secret. Not exactly a secret.” Moira picked up a bottle of water, twisted off the cap. Twisted it back on. “I’m the weakest of us. I don’t need you or Cian to tell me that—though one or the other of you make a point to let me know it with some regularity.”
Something gave a little twist inside Blair’s belly. “And that sucks. I’m going to tell you I’m sorry about that, because I know how it feels to get slammed down when you’re doing your best.”
“My best isn’t altogether that good, is it? No, I’m not looking for sorry,” she said before Blair could speak. “It’s hard to be told you’re lacking, but that’s what I am—for now. So I come up here in the mornings, early, and lift these bloody things the way you showed me. I won’t be the weak one, the one the rest of you have to worry about.”
“You don’t have much muscle yet, but you’ve got some speed. And you’re a frigging genius with a bow. If you weren’t so good with it, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did last night.”
“Work on my weaknesses, and on my strengths, on my own time. That’s what you said to me—and it made me angry. Until I saw the wisdom of it. I’m not angry. You’re good at training. King was…He was more easy on me, I think, because he was a man. A big man at that,” Moira added with sorrow in her eyes now. “Who had affection for me, I think, because I was the smallest of us.”
Blair hadn’t met King, Cian’s friend who’d been captured, then killed by Lilith. Then turned, and sent back as a vampire.
“I won’t be easy on you,” Blair promised.
By the time she’d finished a session with the weights and grabbed a quick shower, Blair had worked up that appetite. She decided to go for one of her favorites, and dug up the makings for French toast.
She tossed some Irish bacon into a skillet for protein, selected Green Day on her MP3 player. Music to cook by.
She poured her second cup of coffee before breaking eggs in a bowl.
She was beating the batter when Larkin strolled in the door. He stopped, stared at her player. “And what is it?”
“It’s a—” How to explain? “A way to whistle while you work.”
“No, it’s not the machine I’m meaning. There are so many of those, I can’t keep them all in my brain. But what’s the sound?”
“Oh. Um, popular music? Rock—of the hard variety.”
He was grinning now, head cocked as he listened. “Rock. I like it.”
“Who wouldn’t? Not going for eggs, this morning. Doing up French toast.”
“Toast?” Disappointment fell over his face, erasing the easy pleasure of the music. “Just cooked bread?”
“Not just. Besides, you get what you get when I’m manning the stove. Or you forage on your own.”
“It’s kind of you to cook, of course.”
His tone was so long-suffering, she had to swallow a laugh. “Relax, and trust me on this. I’ve seen you chow down, cowboy. You’re going to like it as much as Rock, especially after you drown it in butter and syrup. I’ll have it going in a minute. Why don’t you flip that bacon over?”
“I’m needing to wash first. Been mucking out the stall and such, and I’m not fit yet to touch anything.”