Harbor (On the Wind #3)

38. Tybalt

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

TYBALT

I wasn’t ever going to get Avianitis. The very idea was absurd and had only become more obviously ridiculous since we’d gotten back to the castle. Perhaps Orestes could change into a bird, but me? Never.

The only thing that made it feel possible was Orestes’s conviction when he stared into my eyes and professed his love for me.

How could anyone doubt him? He was a singular point of light in all the cold, dark north. Everything around him was clear and immutable and?—

And I grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him in for a hungry kiss, a battle of tongues, wiggling my way across the bed to get even closer to him than I’d been before.

“I don’t mind if you hurt me,” I rasped against his lips before diving in again.

I wanted to twine myself around him and keep him in my bed forever. Wanted to believe it when he said he loved me—believe that kind of thing was possible, even when it involved someone as broken and disappointing as I was.

I wanted him to mean it and to stay and to be mine, and I swore to myself, as I hooked one leg over his hip and pulled him closer, that I’d take care of him. Protect him. Make him happy.

And as soon as I had the thought, I knew how ridiculous it was. What could I protect him from? He’d already taken a blade for me. If I really cared for him, I’d send him back to Nemeda to tell his people that there was nothing here for any of them and that they ought not send another.

It was almost like Orestes knew the very second my doubt swirled in. His large hands squeezed my hips and he eased me back.

“I want to,” he whispered.

Then do .

I bit my lip against the plea. It’d hurt him to hurt me, which was absurd. I still couldn’t ask him to do it.

“I will,” he promised, brushing the softest kiss across my brow. His hand swept soothingly up my back, and it wasn’t enough.

“Let me get you something to eat,” he suggested, and finally, he pulled away.

I whimpered. “There’s only one thing I want to eat right now.”

I bit my lip and dropped my gaze to Orestes’s loose trousers—the ones he usually wore when we were alone and his only need was something comfortable. His clothing was strangely tied and so easy to slip out of, but he moved out of arm’s reach, off the bed, and left me to stare at the tented cloth and long to touch what was hidden beneath.

“When you’re better,” he said, shifting into a tunic which hang to conceal his hardness.

He left me alone in my room—the one place in the castle I felt anything close to safe.

I fell back against the pillows with a sound far too like a sob. I wasn’t crying, but I was unmoored, lost, alone. I wished that he’d stayed, or that he wasn’t in the castle at all, and was safely back where he belonged.

It was simpler when he didn’t think he loved me. He’d fuck me then, hold me, let me take and take and take from him until I was too exhausted to take more.

At least I’d had that. Now, I wasn’t convinced he loved me and even if he did, that love kept him apart.

My limbs still felt strange. All over, I was tingly to my marrow. I wanted to squirm around, but there were better ways for me to spend that pent-up energy. It was only that the person I’d wanted to explore those activities with had left to get me some more chicken soup or something equally bland and nutritious.

I was still nursing my disappointment when the door opened.

“I was thinking, if I agree to eat supper, I deserve a prize,” I announced. “You may use your mouth and stick your fingers?—”

I pushed to sit up, only to catch the first glimpse of Penelope and Olive scurrying in. Olive’s eyes darted around the room, but Penelope’s were wide and dark. She stared at me for a moment before spinning to snap the door shut and locking it behind her.

Heat rushed into my cheeks. Perhaps I didn’t mind what most of court thought of me, but it wasn’t my intention to make a fool of myself in front of my new?—

All right, I couldn’t think of Queen Penelope as my mother. I hardly knew what it was like to have one of those, but the new queen was far too young to be mine.

In any case, she and her daughter were firmly categorized under “family” after the kindness they’d shown me, and I didn’t want to offend either one of them.

They, however, didn’t seem to notice my misstep.

Penelope’s breathing was ragged when she burst into my room. She ushered Olive over to the sofa before she came to my bedside and trapped my face in both hands, staring at me like she could see through my strangely tingling bones to the core of me.

“I thought—” she started, but at once, she shook her head. Her thumbs brushed over my cheeks before she let me go and started pacing the room.

“What’s going on?”

She looked at me, swallowed roughly, and shook her head. Her mouth opened and shut a couple times, as if she were struggling to find the words.

Then, there was a knock on the door.

“Tybalt,” Orestes called, “is everything all right?”

I stared at Penelope, eyebrows high. Was it? She didn’t seem well at all.

But whatever the source of her distress, Orestes seemed innocent. As soon as she heard his voice, she crossed the room in half the steps normally needed, ushered him in, and locked the door once more.

Orestes, with a tray of food he’d gotten straight from the kitchen—odd Nemedan darling, fetching his own meals—stood there blinking.

“Are you ill, Penelope?” he asked

She let out a soft gasp, turned to me, and shook her head. “I think—I think you’re in danger.”