Harbor (On the Wind #3)

22. Tybalt

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

TYBALT

I ’d expected Orestes to leave.

Why wouldn’t he? I was prickly and impatient and demanding—hardly anything like a royal of Urial ought to be.

And he . . . didn’t.

He stayed and was kind and close and I?—

I wanted to be better, and I didn’t know why. It wasn’t like I owed Orestes anything in particular. Even if he’d stayed true to his word and we’d hardly slept the night before, for all the time spend with his dick hilt-deep in my ass, we weren’t serious . In fact, buying into the idea that I might grow more attached was nothing but dangerous.

Orestes would return to Nemeda one day, and I certainly couldn’t follow him. Facing Paris and Brett down in Nemeda was an experience I very much did not want to live through, and being run out of the country I should’ve one day ruled? No. My place was in Urial, and Orestes deserved something better than the frigid north. I honestly didn’t think there was a single thing he liked about Urial, and though I was tempted to prod at him to take in the mountains, the snow, the cold and distant beauty of it all, I suspected that kind of thing didn’t appeal to him.

All of this had me out of sorts the following day, and for the first time in weeks, I could not stomach standing in my father’s shadow while he made sour faces at me and asked if I didn’t have some entertainment to divert myself with.

I wondered if he’d heard that I’d moved Orestes into my room.

I wondered if he’d care.

Most likely, he was too preoccupied with his wedding plans to think about our Nemedan guest or any of my entertainments. He’d marry Lady Penelope and then be spared the burden of having to think of me again.

Gods, Lady Penelope already had a daughter, didn’t she? Better to place a well-behaved girl on the throne than?—

Never mind. I made my way to the stable where the hands had Biscuit saddled for me. This time, I wasn’t so keen on running as just taking advantage of one of the few mild days left in the year.

When the snows built up high enough, the stable hands would walk the horses up and down the full length of the stable, but that wasn’t the same as letting the horses run free.

Biscuit hated those long months trapped indoors, when the snows piled too high even for us to brave the wilderness. The only appeal they held for me was the loosening of my countrymen’s belts when they were bored and trapped together, so while the snow sat white and fluffy, only a couple inches over the grass that wasn’t quite dead, we were going out. I sincerely doubted my father would be anything but glad to be rid of me, even if only for a day.

Biscuit knew the trail we took better than I did. Beyond the palace, opposite the village that sat beneath it, we rode up into the hills. At first the paths were gentle, but the farther we rode, the steeper they got. Evergreens grew densely on either side of the path, their boughs dusted white.

The air up here was fresh and cold in my lungs. I shrank into my fur coat, crouching down so that the fur at my collar met the fur of the hat I wore. The trick to managing the cold was layers upon layers.

I’d always like the world from up here. It was quieter, easier to imagine being enough, when all you had to do was be quiet, stay alive, breathe.

My father had liked it up here too, once. At least I thought he had.

I remembered the first time he’d brought me hunting, how he’d crouched behind me as I’d pulled my bow. He’d whispered instructions in my ear. When I’d let the arrow fly and heard the thunk of the tip hitting meat, he’d been so proud. Even as my stomach rolled, he’d grinned at me and clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Just like that, my boy. Just like that.”

That day, I’d been his and my future had stretched out ahead of me, glistening and bright. Back in the hunting lodge, he’d had ciders warmed for us and instructed the chef to prepare rabbit stew and—well, it’d been gamey and not to my taste, but I’d never forget the way he looked at me as we ate it together, like I was really something, and he was proud.

Two years later, he caught me with Milo Montague. We’d been fourteen and clumsy—guileless, really. But I’d kissed him and liked how it felt. I’d spent the whole summer, watching him strip off his shirt to swim in the lake and wondering what it was like to touch his skin.

The girls wanted to kiss him, but I did too, and when the winter stretched out long and we were all caught inside—well, it was common enough in Urial to take on diversions to wait out the worst of the cold. I hadn’t expected that Milo would feel the same spark as I did when we were playing a game and our hands brushed, or that the next time we sat beside one another to listen to a late-night storyteller, his fingers would lace with my own.

I hadn’t expected the significant look he’d sent me when we sat alone in the library. And really, there was only one choice for a boy when sent a look like that .

I’d crawled into his lap and tasted his lips and slipped my hands beneath all his layers and yes, it was like the sun had warmed his skin back in summer and he’d carried that golden glow around with him for months.

He’d felt so good, all firm and smiling beneath me.

And then my father had caught us. Milo had been gone within days, his whole family sent away from court.

My father must’ve thought that’d be enough, and I’d be wiser with the next person I chose. Perhaps I was just being stubborn when?—

Well, no. I didn’t seek the company of other boys just to spite him. It’d have been easier if I didn’t prefer them at all. I just... did. So what Father saw as a stubborn, rebellious streak was me.

Maybe that made it worse.

Still, I liked the hunting lodge where Father and I had been close—liked to remember a time when that was still possible and think of all the ways I’d ruined it since. Truth told, if it weren’t for the horrible loneliness of the lodge, high in the forest and away from the world, I might’ve stayed there all winter long.

I rode past the little path that led directly up to it. The world was quiet, the geese having flown south already.

It was all too easy to hear the snap of a branch, though I didn’t know from where. The hair at my nape prickled in a way that had nothing at all to do with a chill wind slipping beneath my fur cap.

The shriek of a bird of prey overhead was less expected.

An enormous wingspan took up my vision. A furious screech scared Biscuit so much that she reared back.

Next was the shadow, slipping out from between the trees. The sun glinted off a knife in the person’s hand.

The shadow lunged toward me as Biscuit went up on her hind legs, and I panicked, letting go. My back hit the ground, knocking the wind out of me. Snow flattened beneath me, and I had but a second to thank the gods that the man turned toward me rather than show any interest in poor Biscuit, before a naked man dropped out of the sky and the world stopped making sense.