Harbor (On the Wind #3)

6. Tybalt

CHAPTER SIX

TYBALT

T he following day, Father had a feast prepared to welcome the new guest. I was getting dizzy, with the back and forth of him.

So far, he hadn’t noticed that Orestes had been relocated somewhere more suitable. It must’ve seemed an impossibility, that my father would voice a desire and what followed would be anything but capitulation. Still, I’d prepared my story. I would feign ignorance, ineptitude. I’d simply assumed that there had been a mistake and offered the diplomat somewhere more suitable. Father would think me ignorant and useless, but didn’t he already? Nothing to lose by proving him right.

Still, as the servants bustled about in the great hall, bringing out platters heaped high with succulent dishes—and yes, quite a large number of carrots, given the time of year—I was confused.

Did Father want the Nemedan to think we had nothing, or plenty? Was he trying to leverage this opportunity to get something he wanted or merely to shame Orestes?

I wasn’t convinced that Orestes had an abundance of shame at the ready. Not after the way he’d looked at me the night before, not horrified at my proposition but interested. Willing.

And I’d run from him. Even there at the table, watching my plate piled high with roasted root vegetables and pork by a servant, I flushed. I was no blushing virgin, so why had Orestes’s steady acceptance sent me fleeing?

I was just... used to more trickery, more games. The sly winks and veiled words of people too afraid to be visible in our kingdom.

Yes, that was it. He was too large, and too bold on top of it. He’d sent me into a panic.

A panic of a particularly gay variety. A gay panic.

How dramatic.

I was out of sorts, unsure that I knew myself at all, and determined to escape the dinner without incident when my father folded his hands on top of the table, put on his snidest smile, and leaned forward to catch Orestes’s eye farther down the table. Notably, he’d been seated on the opposite side of the table from me, though neither of us were directly beside my father.

No, those were seats reserved for people that he actually liked. Lord Gregory politely dabbed his lips after a sip of wine, and Mercutio’s mother nibbled her lip as she eyed another sweet bun.

“Tell me, how fare the children of Sampson?” Father asked Orestes. “Have they gone native?”

Native to where?

For a moment, Orestes simply stared back at my father. He took another bite of his food, even, then took his time to chew and swallow before he bothered to reply.

“They’re settling in rather well. Comfortable and happy, last I checked.”

Huh... what would that be like? I wasn’t sure I’d ever been comfortable and happy at once.

“That’s wonderful,” I said with an overbright grin. “No doubt without their willingness to cross the borders of our kingdom, we wouldn’t be treating with you now.”

My father scoffed. “A bunch of sissies. Limp wristed fops and traitors, the lot of them. Don’t know how they slithered out of Sampson’s?—”

Mercutio’s mother gasped, and Lord Gregory cleared his throat loudly. An uncomfortable chill rushed down the table. Father was violating Urial’s most sacred sense of decorum. We did not talk about that kind of thing.

My jaw ached from clenching. Only months ago, my father had been determined to marry me off to one of them. They’d pleased him well enough then. Sure, Helena, the youngest and a woman, so she hadn’t much pleased me. But she hardly counted in my father’s eyes as more than a piece to maneuver on his game board.

“Are they?” My smile tightened on my face. My neck was achy and tense. “I’d have thought Paris’s success with the Nemedans is proof of how well suited he is to the task you set for him, Father.”

The king turned his scowl on me, and I smiled while my stomach rolled with nerves.

“They are a credit to your people,” Orestes agreed, meeting my eye.

And there, that spike of panic returned.

I looked down at my plate and took another bite—decided, in fact, that my mouth would be best used chewing for as long as I could get away with silence.

By the end of the night, I was exhausted. Completely finished, though I’d not said much else.

The only thing on my mind was crawling under my bedspread and never coming out. I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.

Only moments after I’d entered my chambers, Mercutio slipped in behind me.

“Well, that was dramatic,” he announced, falling gracefully into one of the wingback chairs nearest the lit hearth and tossing his arm over the back.

I could only give him a flat look as I unbuttoned my blue silk dinner jacket. Dramatic didn’t begin to cover it.

“Perhaps, if the Nemedan had brought a gift for your father, some kind of offering, it might’ve smoothed things over?” Mercutio pushed forward, craning over his knees. “Do you think? He was so eager for oranges only months ago.. .”

I scoffed. Mercutio knew better than that, and the way he tilted his head at my flat look said he was as unconvinced as I was. “I don’t believe we sent anything along with Paris. Why would the Nemedans think to return generosity when they haven’t received it?”

Mercutio smiled at me like I was a particularly clever child. “Why, indeed. What of your luck with the Nemedan? You were surprisingly distant tonight. I’d have expected you to choose his lap for a seat at supper.”

I snorted. “Oh, I’m laying the groundwork for an affair the likes of which Urial has never seen.”

“Hah! Urial would very much like to pretend it’s never seen anyone like either of us, but I take it to mean you’re yet unwilling to surrender the Nemedan to me?”

I jabbed my finger in the air, though with little heat behind it. “You’re not to touch him.”

He held up his hands. “Fair enough, fair enough. I suppose I’ll have to seek out my pleasures elsewhere.” The way he looked at me then, sidelong and assessing, said he might’ve picked his target.

“Shall I stay, Your Highness?” Mercutio tipped his head to the other side, his hazel eyes twinkling like amber, the cant of his brow implying more than either of us could dare utter aloud—at least until the haze of lust was so heavy on us that we lost all good sense.

But my desire fell flat, and I frowned. I wanted to believe it was just exhaustion that kept me from taking Mercutio up on his offer until a vision of the hungry expression Orestes had given me the day before flashed through my mind.

I might’ve closed my eyes and pretended I was having Orestes if it weren’t for the fact that Mercutio was different from our resident Nemedan in every conceivable way. He was slight, like me. Easy to hide beneath the covers if I received an unexpected guest first thing in the morning, and my servants were well used to drawing the curtains discreetly around the mess of my bed before anyone caught sight of him, as if mussed sheets when I was only just rising for the day was the reason.

Overall, a most convenient and talented lover, but Mercutio wasn’t big enough to cover me with his body and press me down, down, down into my bed until I ceased to exist as anything more than a creature mad with desire.

“Not tonight. After that fiasco, I’m exhausted.”

Mercutio’s brow rose high, and I realized that I’d never actually turned him down before. It had never mattered how tired I was, how recently sated; if someone was offering pleasure, I meant to take it.

“All right then,” he said, rising from his seat. He didn’t look disappointed, exactly. More speculative.

He bent into a bow. “Good night, Your Highness.”

“Good night, Mercutio.”

Only, would it be? I was going to bed alone.

I’d never liked being alone.