“Just part of a very long day. Something else you missed.” She kept her voice low. “I found Moira arguing with Cian at the edge of the courtyard.”
“Not a big surprise.”
“It was when he finished the argument with his lips.”
“Come again?”
“He kissed her. Hard, steamy, passionate.”
“Ho boy.”
“She was pretty shaken.” Glenna glanced over her shoulder. “And not, in my opinion, due to insult and outrage.”
“I repeat: Ho boy.”
“I’m telling you because I don’t want to be worried about this all by myself.”
“Thanks for sharing.”
“What are friends for?” Glenna stepped back. “Finish that potion, Moira,” she said, lifting her voice now to conversational level. “I mean it.”
“I am. I will. You’ve fussed enough.”
Moira sat near the fire. She wore robes now, with her hair loose down her back. The bruising on her face stood out against her pallor. “Blair, thank you for coming. I know you must be tired, but I didn’t want you to go to bed before I thanked you.”
“How are you holding up?”
“Glenna’s fussed and tended and dosed me.” She held up the cup, drank the contents down. “I feel well enough.”
“It was a good fight. You had some nice moves out there.”
“I toyed with him too long.” Moira lifted her shoulders, then winced as the wound in her side objected to the movement. “That was foolish and prideful. More foolish, more prideful to tell you to release the second. You were right not to.”
“Yeah, I was.” Blair came over to sit on the hassock at Moira’s feet. “I’m not going to tell you I know anything about being a queen. But I do know that being a leader doesn’t mean doing it all yourself. Being a warrior doesn’t mean fighting when the fight isn’t necessary.”
“I let my needs cloud my judgment. I know that. I won’t do so again.”
“Well, all’s well that ends.” She patted Moira’s knee.
“You’re the best friends I’ve known, save Larkin. And the closest women to me but my mother. I saw by your faces when you stood in the door that Glenna told you what she saw between me and Cian.”
Unsure how to answer, Blair rubbed her hands on her thighs. “Okay.”
“I think we might have some wine.” When Moira started to rise, Glenna laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her.
“I’ll get it. I didn’t tell Blair to talk behind your back, or gossip.”
“I know that as well. It was concern, as a friend, as another woman. There’s no need for concern. I was angry. No, enraged,” Moira corrected as Glenna came back with the wine. “That he would take it upon himself to end what I wanted to do.”
“He only beat me to it by a couple seconds,” Blair told her.
“Well. Well. I went after him when it was my duty to stay, to speak to my people. But I went after him, and I deviled him. He’d done what he did to stop me from making a foolish and perhaps fatal mistake. And he told me as much, but I wasn’t ready to listen, to accept. He showed me as much, and it’s all of a piece, what happened at the end of it. He only showed me that I wasn’t strong enough to stop any sort of attack. It meant nothing more than that.”
“Okay…” Blair searched for words. “If you’re satisfied with that.”
“It’s difficult for a woman to be satisfied when she’s kissed in such a way, then coldly rejected.” Still Moira lifted a shoulder. “But it was done in anger on both sides. I won’t apologize to him, nor do I expect he will to me. We’ll simply go on, remembering there are more important things than pride and temper.”
“Moira.” Glenna stroked a hand over Moira’s hair. “Do you have feelings for him?”