Harbor (On the Wind #3)

41. Orestes

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

ORESTES

P laying bodyguard to Tybalt came as naturally as breathing. It was a job I was unquestionably better suited to than “diplomat,” and anyone who knew anything about me could see it.

Even Tybalt mentioned how much happier I seemed, something like wary hope in his eyes.

I was trying not to overwhelm him with my clear feelings, so I had just smiled and leaned down to kiss his cheek, which he always seemed to enjoy. Oh, he blushed and glanced around as though worried the people around us would be angry, and sometimes they were, but he always leaned into me, too. I recognized the worry in him. The thought writ large on his face that he didn’t deserve to be loved.

And I wasn’t going to accept that in his life for a minute longer.

I only left him alone at all when he was surrounded by others, particularly the children. Attempted assassinations were still a foreign concept to me, but surely, someone wouldn’t kill him in front of a bunch of kids. Especially not Olive, who’d become so attached to Tybalt that she was nearly constantly on his lap, her arms tight around his neck and head resting on his shoulder.

It was fucking adorable, and also, one of the only things that I’d seen make the sad girl smile.

This, though, made me suspicious.

A strange servant had arrived in the nursery, not one of the ones I usually saw around the castle, insisting I’d received a letter and needed to come get it, immediately.

He’d waved me toward the door, annoyed and impatient before I’d even denied his demand.

Me? I didn’t like the look of this fellow. Didn’t like the malice in his eyes or the way his gaze slid with contempt over to my Tybalt.

So I waved to one of the servants who was always working in the nursery with the children. “Eva, dear, could you go get Mercutio for me?”

She nodded, bright smile on her face, and ran off.

The man who’d come to order me away turned to glare at first the retreating young woman, and then me. “He can’t pick up your letter. It has your name on it.”

I just smiled at the man and pretended to not comprehend him. Though Urial and Nemeda shared a common language, some of the ruder people of Urial were all too willing to presume I didn’t understand the language. Or maybe they thought that I was unintelligent to a degree that I didn’t comprehend simple things like picking up my own letters.

What I understood, in this moment, was that instead of simply bringing me a letter, they had come in and insisted that I was to leave Tybalt alone.

Not. Happening.

It was less than five minutes before a rather confused Mercutio arrived, looking first to Tybalt, who was sitting with one of the children, sorting different colored blocks into piles. He approached me, though, head cocked.

As always, he wore a sword on his hip. I smiled at him.

“Is something amiss?” he asked, glancing back at Tybalt, then the angry young man, then me.

I smiled back, likely not disabusing the jackass of the idea that I was unintelligent. “I understand you’re quite good with that sword, from speaking to Tybalt.”

“I am,” he agreed, with a tiny amused smile. “Sometimes a man has to defend himself from ignorance.”

I nodded back, as though it made sense that he might have to defend himself inside his own home, then motioned to Tybalt. “Since someone has already tried to murder him in the last month, I’m not terribly comfortable leaving Tybalt without someone skilled to defend him. But this young man tells me I’m required to go retrieve a letter.”

Mercutio’s gaze sharpened, and he turned to take in the servant, top to bottom, then back up again. “Does he? Well then, I suppose you should go retrieve it.” He turned to me, smiling broadly, and not a little meanly. “And I shall remain and defend our prince. If anyone attempts to harm him on my watch, I’ll make them regret it.”

I inclined my head to him. “Thank you. That was my hope.”

“Lord Orestes,” he said as I turned to leave. I turned back to him, one eyebrow lifted, and he continued. “Would you like me to send for a sword for you?”

At that, I had to laugh. “Oh no, thank you. I appreciate the concern for my well-being, but I handled the last assassin with his own weapon. I’m more than capable of doing the same again.”

He looked wild for a moment, almost feral with his amusement, and I could see why Tybalt had been drawn to him. He wasn’t for me, perhaps, but he was a beautiful man.

With that, I turned to the angry servant and motioned toward the door. “If you’d be so kind as to show me to this place you insist I need to go to?”

He almost snarled at me, but spun and marched out of the room. Perhaps it was me he intended dead, though, since he didn’t even look back at Tybalt.

There was even a letter, which surprised me a bit. I had entirely expected there to be no letter, and to be attacked, or to find Tybalt attacked. But when I arrived in the hall outside the throne room, the castellan was sitting at a desk there, and he smiled up at me, reaching over to rifle a pile of letters and tug one from the middle. “I hope you’re keeping well, Lord Orestes. I only have one for you, but considering how difficult it must be to get a letter from Nemeda to the castle, you clearly have determined friends.”

“I suppose I do,” I agreed. There was a draft next to me, just enough air to indicate movement, so I spun to look at the angry servant who had led me this far, to find him turning to stomp away. “Something amiss?” I called after him.

He growled over his shoulder. “I’m sure you can find your way back to the brats.”

“To His Highness, your prince, you mean,” I corrected.

He scoffed and continued to walk away.

The castellan frowned after the man, shaking his head. “I know Queen Penelope’s family are to be made as comfortable as possible, but I tell you, Lord Orestes, the servants they brought with them from their country estate have the worst attitude. I struggle to find positions I can give them.”

“He’s to bring people to get their mail?” I asked, because frankly, it seemed odd. Why not have him deliver the letters instead?

He shook his head. “Not at all. I asked him to take letters to the royal family and he disappeared.”

Ah. Exactly as I’d been concerned, then. He had, in fact, been trying to lure me away from Tybalt.

I shook my head. “Queen Penelope is a fine, upstanding woman. Amazing she managed to make that of herself, surrounded by such people.”

The castellan gave me a knowing look and nodded in return. “Amazing indeed, Lord Orestes.”

I left with my letter, keeping an eye on my surroundings as I went, just in case this situation was an ambush for me, and not an attempt on Tybalt. It would be convenient for them to see me dead first, after all, to get me out of the way so that they could kill Tybalt more easily.

I returned to the nursery to find Tybalt reading to the assembled children. They were, unsurprisingly, enthralled. Being read to at that age was always a wonder, but Tybalt had some talent at reading stories—he affected voices for different characters, acted out the parts, and reacted to the story with real emotion, and it drew everyone in. It was a thing of beauty, seeing him so accepted and loved, as he should be.

There, finally, I opened the letter, which proved to be from Killian. Not Brett, even though I’d written asking him for help in the matter of Tybalt’s possible Avianitis infection. Annoying, and rather unlike Brett to fail to come through like that.

I was quickly distracted from any irritation, though, by Killian’s words. They were... well, it was all mildly dissatisfied, as Killian always was, but also clear in every word that he was deeply in love with Hector.

More important than any of that, it was...

Over.

The war with the southlands was over.

I gasped in a breath and fell against the wall, staring at the words in shock. The war against the southlands, that had started so many years before I was born, was over.

Mercutio was beside me suddenly, and Tybalt paused in his reading. I shook my head and waved them all off. “Good news. It’s... it’s good.”

At least, I thought it was.

It did remind me of a conversation I’d had with the castle servants early in my stay, on the other hand. About how Nemeda couldn’t afford to fight a second war while also fighting in the south.

Apparently, now, if Albany forced the matter for whatever reason, we wouldn’t have to worry about that.

I did not want a war with Urial, but somehow, the thought sat heavily inside me that perhaps Urial did not feel the same, since they were represented by a madman.