Sipping her drink, Blair tried not to openly gawk at the dynamic developing between the two. Serena was her best friend and Chuck had become... well, something more than just a plotting partner. Seeing them as future step-siblings was bizarre and almost unsettling. She had never grouped them as a unit before, it had always been Serena&Blair or the three of them and Nate. For a moment the temptation to speak up and redirect attention back to her weighed on Blair, but even she could see that Serena's fears for her mother and brother took precedent.
She contended herself with fiddling with her dress, even more aware of the sorry state it was in now that Chuck was back looking annoyingly put-together and well groomed. She ran a self conscious hand through her curls, suddenly worried that Chuck was right and Gossip Girl's prying eye would find them even here. The last thing she needed was a picture of herself in a blood-stained dress appearing on everyone's phones. The caption practically wrote itself.
"Yes," Blair piped up suddenly, Chuck's question causing her to zero in on Serena. "What were you doing with Carter? I thought you and... Dan were attending the party together." It was clear from the slight hesitation before she said his name, that Blair still thought of the upstart Brooklynite by one of his many unkindly nicknames. It might have seemed odd, questioning her friend about boys when there were still unfolding horrors on the streets of New York, but the easy familiarity of the Palace and her own low alcohol tolerance were causing her to finally relax.