Harbor (On the Wind #3)

27. Orestes

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

ORESTES

S aved his life.

It wasn’t... untrue, necessarily. There had been a man with a knife, and Tybalt wasn’t much for fighting. Of course, he’d been on a horse the size of a small shed, so there was the possibility the horse could have stopped the attempt, but also, I’d seen how it had reacted to the fighting. Tybalt’s horse was not one of the southerners’ trained warhorses, even if her size made me nervous every time I saw her.

I had put myself between Tybalt and the man with the knife, but it had been instinct. I’d spent so long putting myself between men with knives and all that I loved, there was no way I could see an attempted attack and not choose to stop it.

It was simply who I was.

He sighed and leaned against me, his head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry I didn’t help you more. I didn’t... You had to sew yourself up. I should have been able to do that.”

“Stitched a lot of wounds in your life, have you?”

He scrunched up his nose as though the very idea of stitching a wound was horrible. I couldn’t blame him, as it wasn’t especially fun to do, let alone on oneself. Snuggling even closer to me, he scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I haven’t. Who goes around getting stabbed like that?”

I wondered if he realized how at odds his words were with his actions.

How at odds his words and actions always were.

He would swear that he didn’t care about a thing even as he clung to it. Insist that nothing in the world was important while in his eyes, you could see his heart breaking. He was a complete contradiction as a human being, and somehow, I didn’t mind it at all.

Quite the contrary, I wrapped my arm around him and pulled him even closer.

I could only curse the wretched king who had made his son think he wasn’t allowed to give a damn about anything.

“Unfortunately, it seems to happen to me all too often,” I said, trying to keep the tone light. Joking about getting stabbed often was... weird, to say the least, but I wasn’t sure what else to do in the circumstances. It was either laugh or cry, and crying wasn’t going to help either of us. When he stayed quiet, though, I started rambling. “It’s not such a big deal, as long as it doesn’t get infected. The stitching is the hard part, then you just have to keep it clean. You get stabbed enough times, you get used to it. So... now you know. For the next time.”

He lifted his head, one eyebrow raised sardonically. “For the next time I get stabbed?”

“Well, technically I’m the one who got stabbed. So maybe for the next time I get stabbed.”

His eyebrow lowered, eyes softening. He looked like nothing so much as a sleepy kitten in that moment, soft and warm and?—

Lowering his face, he pressed his lips to mine, gentle and slow. It was a first for us, just kissing like this. No force, no passion, only a simple, sweet press of lips. Every time he’d ever touched me before, it had been with intention. With an inherent demand that I fuck him, as soon as I could possibly manage it.

But he wasn’t atop me. Wasn’t demanding.

He was only giving.

I could only imagine that was difficult for him. The people around him all wanted so much from him, and no one ever gave much, if anything, in return. They all expected him to be this impossible creature, diplomat and general and leader and merchant and lawmaker all in one, and none of them offered anything in return for this work they expected of him. They didn’t even want to follow him if he did all those things, all of them complaining about how he wasn’t all things to all people, and how that was a failure.

My heart ached for him, and this ridiculous pedestal the people of Urial insisted he must climb onto. I wanted nothing more than to wrap him in a little blanket cocoon and hide him away from all of them. Under his bed, maybe, or just within its closed curtains. Insist he was no longer available to be a target for their rudeness. Let them see how they managed to deal with all their problems on their own.

I tugged him up so that his head was on the pillow next to mine, ready to sleep for a week, when suddenly, it hit me like a wagon out of nowhere.

Love.

All these tender feelings weren’t just admiration or other soft things. No. I was in love with Tybalt.

Oh shit.