Harbor (On the Wind #3)

29. Orestes

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ORESTES

H ow was it possible for someone to be adorable while also being entirely incompetent? Yet, Tybalt seemed to manage it admirably.

Certainly, he was beautiful. No one in their right mind could deny that, with his red hair catching the first morning light from the windows and looking almost like a halo around his head. His skin was perfect, unblemished and unscarred, as smooth as a stone weathered by centuries of rain.

But he also hadn’t realized that water was a key ingredient when cooking oats.

And why would he? I doubted he’d ever tried to cook anything before in his entire life. And he’d managed to think it through and add sugar and spices to the pot, so clearly he was clever.

But I had known that already. No one was as quick with words as Tybalt was if they weren’t terribly clever. Far more intelligent than the likes of me. So it wasn’t a matter of intelligence, only experience, where he was lacking.

We managed to save the oats, using a new pot for them while the burned one sat outside with snow in it to soak off the scorched bits. I didn’t say it was impressive that his lodge had so many of them—I didn’t much want him to think that Nemeda was poor just because all abandoned houses didn’t have multiple pots sitting around waiting to be used. To say nothing of having food in an abandoned house.

Not that houses in Nemeda tended to sit empty at all.

If they were inhabitable, they were inhabited. If they were uninhabitable, they were knocked down and the materials were reused for something else.

We sat on the fur rug before the fireplace with our bowls of spiced oats, surrounded by a dozen blankets, and it was wonderfully cozy. Tybalt had built a very nice fire, and he kept feeding it wood whenever it burned down at all. Watching him do that, go outside and come back in lugging logs that were bigger around than his arms, was... well, it was both embarrassing that I wasn’t doing it, and charming that he didn’t hesitate a moment before doing it himself.

His father thought him useless, but it was only because he’d demanded everything and appreciated nothing. When Tybalt had to do a thing and he was capable of it, he did it, without question or complaint. It was only when the demands were ridiculous or impossible that he balked and played the helpless fop.

He wanted to do good. To do right. It was just that no one had ever let him do it before.

I smiled soppily at him as he added the latest log to the fire, and we ate our second meal of the oats he’d made, before lying back down in front of the dancing flames.

It wasn’t long before he was antsy, though. Not one for sitting around doing nothing, my Tybalt.

Pulling away, he sat up and tugged at the blankets. “Let me see your wound. Maybe we should wash it. Or change the bandage.

I let him poke and prod and inspect, but the wound continued to look rather good considering it was an unwanted hole in my side, so I wasn’t worried for myself.

When his eyes slid to one side of the wound, inevitably, and he licked his lips consideringly as he let his eyes drift over the hair at my groin, I sighed.

I wouldn’t—couldn’t—let him think that my hesitation was a lack of wanting him. He had been rebuffed by people who should have cared for him far too often. I refused to be just another on a list of men who had mistreated my Tybalt.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I know. Wounded.”

“It’s not that. It’s...” I groaned and let my head fall back against the pillow he’d brought. “It’s called Avianitis. How we become birds. It’s an illness.”

That didn’t immediately distract him from my cock. “Okay,” he said, shrugging and wrapping a hand around the top of one of my thighs, massaging the muscle lightly.

“It’s catching, Tybalt.”

That actually captured his interest. “Catching? You mean other people can become birds? Is that how Paris?—?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, steadying myself. I was actually doing this. It was madness, but... what choice was there? I’d never been much for lying, and lying now, about this? Impossible.

“Sort of,” I agreed. “It’s what started the war with the southerners. They found out about Avianitis, and they wanted it. But it isn’t something we can simply give.”

And this was where it got complicated. Even Killian, who had lived his whole life in Nemeda, didn’t believe the traditional way of passing on Avianitis was real. He thought it was simply a disease, passed by having sex at all.

But Tybalt hadn’t gotten sick, had he? We’d been having sex for weeks, and he hadn’t so much as felt too tired.

There were others who thought of it as a kind of quickening. For most Nemedans, the love from their families was always there. Our Crestings happened when we became adults, all of us, as easy as falling into it. But when a Nemedan fell for someone outside of our clans, it hit the foreigner fast and hard. Few had survived it.

He was still looking at me, those perfect crystalline eyes oddly guileless, for him. Simply waiting for me to continue.

“It’s passed through sex. But... but it only seems to pass when the person passing it on is in love. With the person they’re having sex with.” I held up a preemptive hand, assuming he was going to argue with me. “I do realize it sounds silly. There’s not another illness in the world that passes only through people in love. But there’s not another illness that makes people able to turn into birds, either. Nemeda has been dealing with it for centuries, and it seems to be the truth. So when the southerners demanded it, we literally couldn’t give it to them. It wasn’t as though we loved them as a whole.”

Tybalt was just staring now. Unblinking. As though I’d said something so ridiculous that not only could it not possibly be true, but his mind couldn’t even absorb such nonsense.

But then he smiled, that beautiful smile that looked like the sun coming up over the ocean. “So what’s the problem? It’s not like anyone could ever be in love with me.”

For a moment, all I could do was stare in shock at his entirely unchanged face. Calm. Impassive, even, as he told me that no one could love him. This, the man I loved. He truly believed he was unlovable, and my heart shattered.