I woke up early the next morning and went for a jog. Staying on the property made it quite the workout, since I had to run through the wooded trails instead of flat roads. By the time I got back to the villa, I was exhausted and covered in sweat.
“What’s with the new look?” Embry asked me, sitting at the kitchen table with his espresso.
I filled a large glass of water and drank it before answering him, “Working on my cardio.” My breathing was still labored, but my heartbeat was slowly getting back to normal.
“Because you plan on listening next time we tell you to run?” he asked with the hint of a smile.
“Gabriel didn’t tell you?” My legs were killing me, so I wanted nothing more than to take the seat next to him. I knew from experience that I should keep moving, so I walked around the room instead.
“He hasn’t,” he raised an eyebrow at me.
“I’ve decided that I don’t want to work on the magic anymore. I want you guys to train me like what we did at Caleb’s. Kickboxing, weapon-wielding, throwing things… anything I can use against Donovan’s army,” I looked him square in the eyes.
“What about Donovan?” he asked after a moment, when his judgmental look didn’t make me falter.
“You would never actually let me fight him. I’m not a match for him either way.”
“Gabriel agreed to this?” he asked.
“He said I could stop with the magic.”
“What happened? You were doing so good,” he looked defeated.
“I was hurting people,” I reminded him. “I practically set Gabriel on fire, nearly crushed the mole with that rock and almost killed Gabriel when I threw him into a tree.”
“None of those actually hurt anybody,” Embry argued.
“I killed that woman in the diner. I’m sure she had done terrible things, but there’s a reason why we put people in jail and have trials before giving them the death penalty. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I raised my arms and she died. I don’t ever want that to happen again.”
He opened his mouth to say something, then looked at my face and reconsidered, “I won’t force you to do something you don’t want to do.”
“Thank you.” I took a seat beside him. “Will you train me?”
“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure you get through this,” he assured me, putting his hand on mine.
I spent my mornings training with Embry, alternating between kickboxing and fencing, then Gabriel would come in the afternoons and do some capoeira or aikido with me. We had just started hand-to-hand combat and it was by far my favorite. I would say I was getting good at it, but learning the equivalent of a choreography with Gabriel was not the same thing as fighting an assailant who took me by surprise.
Last night, Embry had asked me what I would feel most comfortable using if Donovan’s people found us again, so I wasn’t surprised when he showed up during my training session with Gabriel.
“Why are you hoping I’ll be terrible at this?” I asked, knowing how upset he was that hand-to-hand was my favorite.
“Because if you’re more confident in hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to let them get close enough to use it, which isn’t something we ever want to happen.” Their faces showed nothing but concern.
“Or I won’t panic when someone happens to get close,” I argued.
“In a crisis, we don’t rise to the occasion, we fall back on our training,” Gabriel said like a mantra, upping the speed of the training because I refused to stop and let them talk me down.
“We can keep working on the sticks and swords too,” I assured them.
“Fencing doesn’t count,” Embry argued.
“Then why did you bother teaching it to me?” I called him on it. True, the swords in fencing wouldn’t be my first choice if I was attacked, but the skills had to be transferable to real swords.
“In an ideal world, they would never get close enough for you to use any of it.”
“You’re still planning on hiding me any time someone comes close to us? Spend the rest of my life running?”
“If you’re using sticks and stones to fight them, then yes,” Embry at least sounded apologetic.
“They won’t be unarmed when they come for you, Lucy,” Gabriel pointed out. We were in a groove, going faster and faster so I felt completely connected to him. Then he went faster than humanly possible and got my wrists in one hand behind my back, the other arm resting against my neck before I even knew what was going on. “They will either have weapons you can see, Gifts that you can’t, or both.”
“But you can use this in the future, if there’s a weird guy on campus or something,” Embry tried to make me feel better as Gabriel released me, his point made.
“Do I even have a future? I either spend the rest of my life outrunning him, or he finds me and I’m dead.”
“No,” they said in unison, but neither had a plan nor reasoning as to why I would be different from all the Owens women before me.
“I know you think this is useless unless I’m going against a drunk college kid who isn’t much taller or stronger than me,” I summed up their concerns, “but I would like to have options if ever I am cornered with one of them again.”
“You run,” Gabriel said with an intensity that left no room for arguments.
“How about we call it a night?” Embry suggested.
“I’ll go do some laps,” I said, leaving them there and going to change into a bathing suit.
I was trying to make up for a lifetime of prioritizing book smarts in as little time as possible. My legs protested even light jogging this morning, but the water felt wonderful. I started out with the breaststroke, but mostly swam from one end to the other underwater. Adrenaline would help me go faster and harder, but learning to hold my breath and to control it would help keep me focused. Right now, I needed all the help I could get.