Harbor (On the Wind #3)

34. Tybalt

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

TYBALT

T he ceremony was beautiful. An explosion of white petals were scattered across the floor, and I couldn’t tell if it was from the flowers that filled the room, which looked slightly wilted after being brought up from the south, or if they’d been put there purposefully.

It was like walking into a different world—Orestes and me there with our weather-stung cheeks and heavy coats, and everyone else in their finest silks. Long benches had been brought in, arranged for the lords and ladies of Urial to sit and watch my father’s wedding.

How easily time moved on in the palace without me fell like a boulder on the top of my head. It was dizzying and surreal, and at the front of the room, the officiant stumbled over his speech for an instant when he saw us.

As I stood there, dumbfounded, Orestes grabbed my hand. “Come on,” he whispered, and pulled us onto the nearest bench and out of the middle of the room.

I wished I could sink into the seat and disappear.

My father’s wedding was playing out right then, and I hadn’t even been there. He hadn’t delayed, even with me missing.

Why? Had he expected that I’d never come back?

When I looked toward the front of the room again, my father was only meeting the eyes of his blushing bride, but I felt someone staring. Mercutio, his eyebrows arched high, as if to ask where the hell I’d been.

I shrank further.

As soon as the ceremony was over, my heart palpitating in my chest and my palms sweaty, I patted Orestes’s leg. “We should go.”

I wanted to get upstairs, hide out in my room—and yes, maybe take a proper bath. We’d done our best in the lodge, but without servants there to assist, the idea of lugging all those buckets of water to the tub had just seemed impossible to me. Instead, we’d made do with a warm cauldron and rags, and I wanted to soak until the world felt steady once more.

But Orestes hadn’t moved fast enough, or I hadn’t, or time itself had sped up to catch us, but before we’d made it to the door, the happy couple had slipped their congratulators and made their way toward us.

“Congratulations to you both,” I said as they approached. To my father, I didn’t entirely mean it, but I tried to catch Penelope’s eye. I remembered how nervous she’d been in the corridor, how she’d fallen to her knees for my forgiveness, as if that held any weight at all in this place.

I didn’t want her to think that I’d almost missed the ceremony because I’d been sulking or trying to avoid her. The wedding—whether it happened or didn’t, wouldn’t change the fact that my father wished to replace me as heir.

Lady—Queen, I supposed—Queen Penelope smiled tremulously at us. Her thankful response was so softly whispered that I barely heard it.

“Delighted you could make it,” Father said, smiling tightly, all his disdain and disappointment barely restrained. Even missing this ceremony that I’d known nothing about had failed him in some predictable way.

He spared only a glance for Orestes at my side.

Surely my own face held the same rictus grin as Father’s, but I couldn’t tell. My cheeks felt strangely numb. My head was throbbing—not like a usual headache, but as if my skull were being squeezed in a vise.

Standing before my father had always been straining, but this was absurd.

“And I’m delighted to be here,” I said, bright and honey sweet. Lady Penelope stood behind my father’s shoulder, biting her cherry-red lip, worrying again. Such a nervous woman, for a queen. Perhaps my father liked that quality about her.

Or maybe he just brought it out in her. I was familiar enough with that. It’d taken me years to learn the right expressions and when to use them.

Gods, I likely made her nervous too. Why else bother to seek my forgiveness for all this?

My father’s eyes skimmed me over, head to toe. Around us, courtiers milled closer, quietly controlled smirks on many a face as they leaned in to try and catch my father putting me in my place.

Before the assassin found me, I’d gone out ready to ride, and had nothing to change into in the lodge that wasn’t meant for braving the wilderness. Gods, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to dress anything but practically when we set out that morning through the snow, even if I’d had the equipment at hand.

I’d been lucky to find anything to fit Orestes at all, and the pair of us looked readier for a mountain hike than a soiree.

And still, Father caught me out incisively. “You couldn’t have dressed for the occasion?”

He sneered, and I shrank. “I?—”

“We weren’t here,” Orestes snapped. His tone brokered no patience for Father’s bullshit, and the king’s eyes narrowed at him. It was a relief to have them off me.

“We’ve been stuck, for days, in an abandoned hunting lodge, recovering from an attempt on the prince’s life,” Orestes continued sharply.

“Can’t say I noticed.” Father’s nose flared. “But that would certainly explain the smell.”

When he looked my way once more, the whole world tilted strangely. Even when I looked at him, his features began to twirl around monstrously. I tried to blink the illusion away, but everything still looked wavy and off.

“You seem well enough,” Father said.

My gaze dropped to the floor. The carpet there wavered just as much as anything else, all those white petals spreading and swirling in a sea of red. “Quite,” I agreed. “Quite well.”

“Tybalt?”

That wasn’t father; that was Orestes. His voice was sharp with concern, close to my ear, and his firm arm circled around the small of my back so that when the world dragged sharply to the left and my legs gave out, he was there to catch me.

Or there to soften my fall. He made a quiet sound as I leaned against his wounded side.

Then, I had only the impression of going soft and slippery as pudding before I slid to the ground and everything went dark.