“Thank you.” Ceara mopped at her damp face. “I don’t know what I’d have done these past hours without Isleen and Dervil.”
“It’s good that you have your friends. But you’ll have your tea, then you’ll go to your family. You’ll need your family now. You have my leave for as long as you want it.”
“There’s something more I want, Your Majesty. Something I ask you to give me, in my brother’s name.”
Moira waited, but Ceara said nothing more. “Would you ask me to give you my word on something without knowing what I promise?”
“My husband marches tomorrow.”
Moira felt her stomach sink. “Ceara.” She reached over, smoothed a hand on Ceara’s hair. “Sinann’s husband marches with the sunrise as well. She carries her third child, and still I can’t spare her from his leaving.”
“I don’t ask you to spare me. I ask you allow me to march with him.”
“To—” Stunned, Moira sat back. “Ceara, your children.”
“Will be with my mother, and as safe and well as they can be, here, with her. But my man goes to war, and I’ve trained as he has. Why am I to sit and wait?” Ceara held out her hands. “Peck at needlework, walk in the garden when he goes to fight. You said we would all need to be ready to defend Geall, and worlds beyond it. I’ve made myself ready. Your Majesty, my lady, I beg your leave to go with my husband on the morrow.”
Saying nothing, Moira got to her feet. She moved to the window to look out at the dark. The rain, at last, had stopped, but the mists from it swarmed like clouds.
“Have you spoken with him on this?” Moira asked at length.
“I have, and his first thought was for my safety. But he understands my mind is set, and why.”
“Why is it?”
“He’s my heart.” Ceara stood, laid a hand on her breast. “I wouldn’t leave my children unprotected, but trust my mother to do all she can for them. My lady, have we, we women, trained and slogged in the mud all this time only to sit by the fire?”
“No. No, you haven’t.”
“I’m not the only woman who wants this.”
Moira turned now. “You’ve spoken to others.” She looked at Dervil and Isleen. “Both of you want this as well?” She nodded. “I see I was wrong to hold you back. Arrangements will be made then. I’m proud to be a woman of Geall.”
For love, Moira thought as she sat to make another list of names. For love as much as duty. The women would go, and fight for Geall. But it was the husbands and lovers, the families inside of Geall that made them reach for the sword.
Who did she fight for? Who was there for her to turn to the night before a battle, to reach for that warmth, for that reason to fight?
The days ticked away, and Samhain loomed like a bloodied ax over her head. And here she sat, alone as she sat alone every night. Would she reach for a book again, or another map, another list? Or would she wander the room again, the gardens and courtyards, wishing for…
Him, she thought. Wishing he would put his hands on her again and make her feel so full, so alive, so bright. Wishing he’d share with her what she’d seen in him the night he’d played music and had stirred her heart as truly as he’d stirred her blood.
She’d fought and she’d bled, would fight and bleed again. She
would ride into battle as queen, with the sword of gods in her hand. But here she sat in her quiet room, wishing like a blushing maid for the touch and the heat of the only one who’d ever made her pulse quicken.
Surely that was foolish and wasteful. And, it was an insult to women everywhere.
She rose to pace as she considered it. Aye, it was insulting, and small-minded. She sat and wished for the same reasons she’d held back sending the women on the march. Because it was traditional for the man to come to the woman. It was traditional for the man to protect and defend.
Things had changed, hadn’t they?
Hadn’t she spent weeks in a world and time where women, like Glenna and Blair, held their own—and more—at every turn?
So, if she wanted Cian’s hands on her, she’d see that he put them there, and that would be that.
She started to sweep out of the room, remembered her appearance. She could do better. If she was about to embark on seducing a vampire, she’d have to go well armed.
She stripped off her dress. She might have wished for a bath—or oh, the wonderfully hot shower of Ireland—but she made do washing from the basin of scented water.