Harbor (On the Wind #3)

10. Tybalt

CHAPTER TEN

TYBALT

T he court had already forgotten me, everyone wiggling their way forward to kiss my father’s ring and congratulate him on his newfound happiness.

It should’ve been a relief. Urial no longer needed me to be a decent prince, a decent man. I could be as indecent as I liked.

My father no longer had need of me, presuming Lady Penelope was as fertile as her youth suggested.

There was nothing left for me in the throne room. I should’ve been able to leave.

Instead, I stood frozen, watching as whatever potential I might’ve had was dismantled and taken away. I’d longed for my freedom for years, so why did it feel so bitter to look at the mechanism of it now?

Though I kept breathing, the air felt lifeless in my lungs—the same dank, dusty air of a tomb, the kind that felt utterly unwholesome.

The whole world had taken on a strange, ringing quality, right up until someone reached out and touched my arm.

I found myself staring up into the eyes of the Nemedan envoy, a head taller than me and more than twice as broad. He blocked off the view of my father and his soon-to-be bride, and the people at my side looked skeptically at the foreigner and edged away from us.

No sense refraining from levying offense against me if I’d never sit the throne. Their distasteful moues turned to indulgent smiles as they turned back toward my father, and I watched them cut me loose and leave me behind.

“Prince Tybalt?—”

My eyelids fluttered and I turned to stare at the center of the Nemedan’s chest instead.

His voice was so low and pleasant. When I glanced up at him, his eyes were swimming with concern.

That felt . . . off.

“—are you all right?”

I shook myself and lifted my chin. “Why ever wouldn’t I be?”

The corners of Orestes’s mouth turned down. He, at least, seemed able to come with a slew of reasons on the spot, but I refused to look directly at any of them.

“This is a glorious day. A momentous occasion for both the realm and my family. I couldn’t be happier.”

Orestes remained unconvinced. His brow furrowed. His jaw flexed.

But he didn’t have to question me aloud. The arch of his brow was sufficient enough.

My breath caught. In the face of his doubt, all my rage at being passed over bubbled over. I might’ve been a fuckup, but I’d never had a chance. I was?—

A waste.

I was a waste.

I’d had decades to get myself in order, earn my place as prince. I’d failed. That was all this was: my failure.

Standing there, having to face it as a foreigner observed my fall from grace, was too much.

“We should fuck,” I snipped. I sounded every bit as strained and angry as I felt, though I didn’t mean to make Orestes the object of my anger.

His dark eyebrows shot up, and that was so much better than seeing his clear doubt. “Oh?”

I nodded, the decision firming up in my mind. “Yes. We should absolutely fuck.”

Per usual, fucking would fix everything.

At least it would make me care less.

The people who’d edged away from us, turning their attention to my father for a chance to earn his favor, snapped their heads around and stared at me, horrified.

I ignored them to hold Orestes’s gaze. I wouldn’t buckle here today.

“It will please you,” I purred, leaning in and sliding the heel of my palm up Orestes’s broad chest, spreading my fingers wide and curling them to dig into his warm flesh. “It’ll sure as fuck please me, and it’ll displease my father. So, what do you say?” I bit the tip of my tongue, turning my most tempting smile on him and praying it worked. I needed?—

I needed the release. The attention. The touch of someone who saw me.

Fuck, I just needed the distraction.

I leaned in, pressed closer to him right there in the throne room where I’d spent too many years pretending I was decent. “Do you want to fuck me?”