Harbor (On the Wind #3)

37. Orestes

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

ORESTES

T he day after Tybalt got sick, I came down with a little sniffle, but it never progressed much further than that.

And then . . . he got better.

Not to say that bothered me, but this couldn’t be the terrifying Avianitis, could it?

Back home, people talked about it as though it lasted weeks, and the fever was so high that the victims had to be bathed in cool water to keep them alive. Most of all, it didn’t always work. People died.

Tybalt had come nowhere near death.

No, in fact, less than three days after he’d fainted in the great hall, he was stretched across my lap like a satisfied cat, demanding petting. Another few days, and his fever was entirely gone. Not that he was entirely better a week later, but this couldn’t be the illness that my people lived in fear of infecting outsiders with.

He was laying on his side, tracing patterns in the blankets with one finger, trying and succeeding at looking fetching as he lowered his eyelashes and looked up at me through them, his lips slightly parted.

“It’s cold over here by myself,” he murmured, as though I couldn’t see straight through him. He was angling for sex.

The wound in my side was enough better than I could probably manage it, and he was clearly feeling better if he was hinting around it again. He’d mostly wanted to sit in my lap and snuggle for the last week, which had been a very different feeling than his usual constant want to ride my cock. I couldn’t complain at all about either, but it had been a bit of a relief not to be disappointing him because of my injury. Besides which, keeping him close had been exactly what I’d wanted as well.

It was what I still wanted.

Unfortunately, it also led to a problem: maybe he really had only been sick with some common Urial ailment that went around during their cold months. We hadn’t had sex since before I’d realized I had gone and fallen in love, so maybe I had managed not to give him Avianitis.

Which meant that he was still susceptible to it, so we were back to the possibility that having sex with him might kill him.

And of course, him feeling better meant that he was getting frisky again. I was the one who’d gone and fallen in love with him, so it wasn’t like the behavior surprised or bothered me. I recognized it for what I suspected it was: a need for comfort and acceptance. Tybalt had spent too much of his life getting neither, so he took them wherever he could find them, and one of the easiest places to see both was in sex. Especially if you were damned good in bed, like Tybalt was.

Like I’d become a decade earlier, trying to find my own peace, sleeping with anyone who’d have me. Eventually, Killian had dragged me aside and told me that the Crane loved me, and I didn’t need to do anything to deserve that love. I’d reacted with anger aloud, insisting that I didn’t want such a flimsy thing as love, but he hadn’t responded in kind. He’d just squeezed my shoulder and left me alone with my thoughts, and eventually, I’d figured things out.

As with all things, while I appreciated what Killian had done for me, I suspected his approach wasn’t the right one to take with Tybalt. Killian was straightforward and blunt, and Tybalt was from Urial. Urial, where they had made an art of lying and hiding their feelings.

It was no wonder Killian had despised the place; Urial was his opposite in every way. He was blunt to a fault, an open book that even a stranger could read on sight. The people of Urial lied for every reason and no reason, and hid every emotion, particularly their finer ones.

It was odd, then, that I loved Killian like a brother, but found that Urial was... growing on me. At least, some of it was. The servants around the castle, though I only knew a handful by name, all seemed upstanding people. Penelope and Olive were excellent. Tybalt, obviously... well, he was Tybalt, and I even loved the broken edges of him. They fit so well with the broken edges of me that I couldn’t have stopped loving him if I’d wanted to.

And part of me did want to, since me loving him meant once again that he was in danger. Until I left or he had a bird, he was in danger thanks to me and my uncontrolled emotions.

He sighed and patted the bed, hard. “You’re not much one for hints, are you?”

I rolled my eyes, but followed the order, crossing the room and sliding onto the bed beside him. Without conscious thought, I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close to me. “I take hints just fine,” I protested. “I was just thinking.”

“Uh oh,” he grumbled. “That sounds like a dangerous thing to go doing.”

I sighed and leaned my head against the top of his, petting one hand in long strokes down his warm back. “You and Penelope said that what you had was just a seasonal Urial illness. That you all get it, sometimes.”

“As much as I love to say I told you so, I think I’ll say it twice, in this case. Because I did tell you so. Even when I was confused and feverish.” He grinned against my collarbone, and I could feel his teeth nipping at my skin.

“And your fever never got terribly high,” I said, sighing.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” He pulled away, looking up at me, something between hurt and confusion in his eyes.

I looked away, forced myself to stop biting my lip, and nodded. “It wasn’t Avianitis.”

He scoffed. “Of course it wasn’t. I told you no one loves me. No reason to worry about?—”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I meant... I meant that if I fuck you now, I can still give it to you. It’s not over. And especially now, when you’re still weak from just being sick, I can’t—I can’t take a chance with your life. Because no matter what you think, Tybalt, I do love you. It would kill me if I hurt you.”

His luminous blue eyes went wide as he stared at me, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to hit me or kiss me. Both, maybe.