Harbor (On the Wind #3)

32. Tybalt

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

TYBALT

W henever Orestes looked out a window, he did it with a queasy grimace. He mistrusted the snow as much as he’d mistrust an army marching on his people’s wall—perhaps more so, because men, he seemed to understand.

There was no reason for me to look too critically at the fact that I believed wholeheartedly that Orestes saw men clearly, precisely as they were, yet I couldn’t believe he knew his own mind.

If he was so assured of his feelings and he was right , I had much more to lose than I wanted to think about.

Even spending a dull afternoon tucked under blankets with him while his fingertips casually brushed my arms and waist—it was nice. A tingly, warm, sleepy feeling suffused our little nest, and I was almost convinced that it was all right to indulge in it. Almost.

“Do you want me to find a book or game or something?” I mumbled into the crook of my arm as he traced mindless shapes across my skin. His touch was pure sweetness.

We’d napped that afternoon, dozing on and off, and most recently, I’d woken to this gentle touch. I was curled on my side, his enormous body curled behind me, his hands wandering wherever he liked, and I was inclined to let him keep at it.

“Only if you’re bored,” he mumbled.

“Not bored.”

When he kissed my ear, I shivered and gasped. I wanted more, and I wanted him to hold me in this hazy pink warmth forever.

“I need you to get better soon,” I grumbled.

He hummed curiously, even as he brushed his lips across my shoulder.

“So you can follow up all of this wonderful attention with riding me until I scream,” I clarified for him.

The puff of breath that accompanied his laughter tickled my neck.

Pressing my advantage, I rolled over so I could watch him when he answered me. “Will you?”

“Fuck you?”

“Yeah.”

Orestes lifted his hand and traced the very tip of his middle finger across my cheekbone and down the curve of my face. “I want to.”

I sighed through my nose. That was so not the same thing as saying he would. “But?”

“No buts. Well, a tiny ‘but.’”

“I already told you, if you love me, I’m not letting it kill me. So you don’t need to worry about that.”

Orestes snorted, and the sound was sweeter than expected. “Strangely enough, I believe you on that. If anyone’s stubborn enough to survive Avianitis, it’s you. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Okay. So . . . ?”

“What if you become Nemedan?”

It was my turn to laugh. “If I suddenly gain the ability to change into a bird?”

For Orestes, the matter was all too serious. He raised his brows. “It happened to Paris.”

Right. It had. Paris had fallen in love and gotten all fucked and feathered in the process.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“So try now. Would you be all right with changing?”

I sucked in my cheeks, not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I didn’t want to admit to him that changing sounded so much less horrifying than staying the same.

Back in the palace, I was a disappointing afterthought, even before Father had picked a new bride. Now, someone wanted me dead, and I couldn’t be entirely sure that it wasn’t the king himself. My own damned father.

“I could adjust, if you’d show me how.”

Orestes dipped his chin in a little nod. “I can do that. But what would you tell your people?”

“You’re worried about outing Nemeda?”

He shrugged. “Not exactly, but sort of. It’s gone poorly for us in the past, and the council would be pissed.”

“But they sent you here. Seems like they’re already pissed at you.”

“I’m just inconvenient for them.”

“Why?”

Orestes’s lips moved back and forth for a moment before he answered. “My father. He tried to take power from the other clan chiefs. Got my sister killed in the process. Our clan was dissolved, and it’s easier to reintegrate what’s left of it if there’s not a convenient person for the Eagle to rally around.”

My breath caught. I—I knew some of why he was in Nemeda, but I’d never pressed for specifics. In Urial, it was downright rude to press someone for details they didn’t offer on their own, but Orestes had never shied from sharing with me.

“I didn’t know about your sister,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

His lips tilted up on one side. “Me too.” What else was there to say? It was a tragedy that’d sent him somewhere he’d never wanted to be, and I couldn’t even be sorry for it, because if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have this sliver of time with him.

“Anyway,” he continued, “it’s not about pissing off the council or where I’ll settle. I’d like to keep Nemedans safe, when I’m able, but any decent Nemedan would say the same.”

“I won’t tell,” I promised. Heat had flooded my face and my heart pounded hard, but it was just the thought of—I didn’t like the thought of Orestes in Nemeda alone, his clan torn apart, sent away. Anyone who thought he was inconvenient was a fucking ass. He was?—

He was wonderful.

“If I were to change,” I said, “which I still think is far from a foregone conclusion, I’ll keep your peoples’ secret as best as I’m able.”

“Even if it meant lying to your own?”

“Lying?” I laughed. “Come on. You’ve been with us long enough to realize that openness isn’t expected or admired in Urial. I’ll just keep my mouth shut on the matter.”

“I don’t want you to have to do that.”

I bit my lip and glanced at the hollow at the base of his neck. Yes, that was precisely the spot I wanted to look as I said something so disgustingly vulnerable.

“I think, if I knew what it felt like to be loved and to love someone back, that person’s well-being would take priority over anything else.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see the slow, broad spreading of Orestes’s smile. “Are you saying you might love me?”

I scoffed and shoved his broad, immovable chest, sticking my chin out. “I’m saying I might love the feel of your cock in my needy hole, so get to recovering.”

He snickered and when he wrapped his arm around me, my heart fluttered and it was the worst, most terrifying feeling in the world. Worse than facing an assassin, certainly. My would-be killer and whoever had sent him after me had a job to do.

They wouldn’t leave me alone.

Orestes might.