“Good,” she said. She paused. “You’re sweating. More nightmares?”

“Physio routine.”

“Ah,” she said. She moved her hands, and the way she moved them was reminiscent of my wrist flexes. “We have about an hour before we go. Do you want tea?”

“Showering after this, then tea would be great. I’ll make breakfast.”

“If you’ll eat bacon, egg, and scones, I’m already working on it. I’ll keep it warm and put the kettle on when I hear you shut off the water.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Excellent.”

She stalked over—there wasn’t really a better way to put it with how motivated the movements were, and took the black towel I was holding. I let her, and she stalked her way back out of the room.

I rolled my eyes, returning to the damned dips.

Ashley returned, throwing a white towel so it landed on my bed.

“Thank you,” I said, grimacing as pain shot through my arm.

“Thank you for seeing reason,” she said.

After dips were leg lifts, lying on the bed with legs and feet out off the edge, touching floor, then extending straight up until I couldn’t anymore, then bringing knees to chest. Rinse, repeat. I did something similar with sideways leg-lifts, and then the pike pushups, which were worse than the dips.

I felt shaky and shitty enough at the end of it all that I wasn’t even sure I’d have the appetite to eat. I showered, used Ashley’s charcoal shampoo because mine was running out, and dried off, white towel.

I didn’t use a bathrobe, but instead stepped into my room and got dressed right away. A loose-fitting light gray sweater, dark blue jeans, and black leather boots.

I carefully packed my costume in a bag to minimize wrinkles, breastplate and recently redone decorations sliding into a sheath, with buckles and straps to keep it tidy and relatively inconspicuous. I slung it over my left shoulder, and headed to the kitchen. Swansong was at the table, a laptop sitting across from her, and she was tapping a cup of tea to the webcam.

A toast, it seemed. Kenzie was on the other end, doing something similar with her own cup. They were eating breakfast together.

The bacon and eggs were very simple, the scone was the bakery-made sort that Ashley liked to buy frozen and reheat in the oven, and she’d buttered it for me. The plate sat on a wire rack amid other blueberry scones, over an oven burner she’d set to ‘low’.

A little too warm to touch. I put my sleeves over my hands to move the plate to the table.