Harbor (On the Wind #3)

44. Tybalt

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

TYBALT

T he stone dug into my hip cruelly, and Eric still pushed. I felt that bruising force, even as the world turned around me. My shoulder scraped the stone wall and I cried out, but even then, it didn’t occur to me that I was falling.

Not until I felt the wind rush through my hair. It was?—

Gods, the whole business was terrible, but the wind wasn’t. It felt like a gentle hand, a guide. For a second I was trapped, tangled in my own shirt as it seemed to fall off me, or maybe I out of it. Then it dropped away from me, and I was free.

The next shriek that escaped me was more like an angrily trill. I flapped my arms and the wind caught , and then I was rising. The ground was so far beneath me now, the wall ahead sharp and glittering with mica I’d never noticed before.

I perched on the edge of the stone wall, little talons clinging to stone. No one even looked at me. From where I stood, they were all enormous .

But then there was Orestes, pale and horrified, kneeling between guards who had rushed in to answer the commotion. He’d been subdued—in his shock, perhaps—but a split second after he laid eyes on me, he was beaming. He’d seen me, knew me, and his smile was so broad he looked half mad.

Twittering, I hopped up and down, flapping my arms—my new wings. I’d done it! Something I’d never expected, and it came as easily as breath when the ground had been rushing up to meet me.

I had hardly a moment to celebrate before Eric, baring his teeth in a feral grin, was directing the guards. He waved his hand imperiously. “The Nemedan has betrayed our prince. Tybalt is dead at the hands of his disgusting lover.”

I let out an affronted trill, but once again went ignored. Orestes, however, turned a heavy glare onto the man.

“Is that so?” His voice was cool and smooth, but he knew more than Eric did. The would-be uncle to an unborn king thought I was already handled, hadn’t seen how I’d transformed or even imagined such a thing possible.

Eric turned up his chin, refusing to answer Orestes directly now that he’d been stripped of his sword and made to kneel on the cold stone. The very idea of it! Orestes wasn’t built to kneel in cold places, but I would see that Eric did.

“As is wont to happen when a man brings two swords into his bedroom,” Eric sneered, “our prince has been cut down. There was a fight between them. I was merely making the rounds when I came upon them shouting, and this brute grabbed our prince and shoved him over. We’ve let a snake into our midst, and can hardly be surprised?—”

“We have,” I agreed, perching on the wall, my legs stretched out over the stone I sat on, human once more.

The guards turned toward me, gasping. They leaned closer, as if to see where I’d climbed up from. Then, they looked at me and recoiled.

The chill of the stone beneath my bare feet when I slipped to the ground was... unpleasant. More as a man than as a bird, though I’d hardly liked the cold then. I didn’t think I was anything like the great, formidable eagle of Orestes’s second form, but feathers stood against the cold better than bare skin.

“It was you,” I said, staring Eric right in the eyes, a cold smile on my face.

Perhaps I’d have seen him hanged for his part in a murder, but now, I intended to destroy the very memory of him.

“Lord Eric is the man who threw me from the battlements, or tried to?—”

“You fell,” he hissed, but as he made a move toward me, confused guards reacted on instinct and caught him.

I shrugged. “I caught myself.”

Not an outright lie. Oh, how I’d grown.

“Then why are you naked?” Eric regained his composure, affecting a haughty tilt of his chin that made his jaw look pointier and less handsome. “It’s not like I would?—”

He grimaced, shaking himself at the unwelcome vision of my nakedness.

I huffed, glaring. Perhaps it wasn’t the point, but my pettiness remained. “You should be so lucky as to kneel at your prince’s feet, naked or not.”

“It looks like a lover’s quarrel to me,” Eric said, arching a brow.

“Get fucked,” I hissed.

If any of these people expected me to be perfectly composed with this bastard trying to undermine me, they didn’t know me well.

“I can assure you,” Orestes growled, “the last place I’d take your prince, either to fight or fuck, is anywhere I can see snow .”

I snorted a laugh. Yes, of course that was the most detestable part of all this—there was snow outside, and Orestes wouldn’t have any of that horrible stuff near his lover, much less his dick.

The guards were shifting uncomfortably, flushed and nervous, and as much as I wanted to gripe and hiss, I needed their attention, not their squeamishness over the idea of my cock or Orestes’s. I covered my dick with a hand and waved the other over the wall.

“My clothes came off in the scuffle. They fell.”

One of the guards peered over the wall, where my clothes had leisurely made their way to the snowy ground without me.

After he’d looked to confirm, he shuffled away from me quickly.

“If you’re so discomfited by your prince’s skin, perhaps one of you might offer him your cloak instead of just being childish and staring at the ground? Never in my life have I seen a bunch of grown men so terrified of skin.” Orestes snapped, his patience fraying on the edge of his fear.

A fear for me .

Even standing so near a man who wished me dead, surrounded by those who weren’t entirely sure what to do now that I was daring to command them, I couldn’t help the warm flutter of my heartbeat.

One of the guards tugged off his cloak and handed it to me. I snatched it fast and wrapped it around myself.

“Thank you, Winston.”

He nodded curtly, still shy to look straight at me, but—if I wasn’t mistaken, I thought he was more interested in casting a wary look at Lord Eric.

As depraved as these men thought me, I still wasn’t keen to stand naked before them, so I stood taller once covered. “This was no lover’s quarrel. Lord Orestes, in fact, has saved me from harm and never once caused it. To any of us.”

Some of the guards still looked nervous, but the tides were beginning to shift, more mistrust sent Eric’s way than mine.

“Lord Eric,” I continued, “has not only assaulted my person. He killed Queen Penelope’s late husband—an attempt to move closer to a throne that was never his.”

This, at least, moved them. Perhaps they didn’t like me, but the brand of insidiousness I spoke of was all too believable. A man might grasp for the throne, his crimes done in shadow. That brand of duplicity was to be expected.

“Lock him away. We’ll make a case before the king, and I will see justice done,” I promised.

The guards, shocking no one more than me, listened.

Eric snarled as they pulled him away, and the moment Orestes was let free, he was in front of me, his hands on my arms like he needed to assure himself I was there.

“Oh little bird,” Orestes said, pained and relieved at once. His arms slipped around my waist and he pulled me in. I liked the way that sounded, like I could nestle small and safe in his cupped hands. I stepped on his feet to keep my toes from the cold stone, but when he tightened his arms, he was holding most of my weight himself. “Why did you come here alone? I would’ve?—”

I shook my head. “This mess is my own.”

Orestes scoffed. “Not one part of this is yours to bear alone, Tybalt. It’s never been your fault.”

Strangely, I thought... maybe he was right? That felt absurd, but I never would’ve killed anybody for this godsforsaken place.

My smile turned tremulous. “No but—but I wanted... if I’m to demand what’s mine, I wanted to see that I could stand on my own and not always hide behind you or wait for someone else to fix everything for me.”

Orestes’s brow drew down. His arms tightened around my waist. “You could’ve died.”

“But I flew .”

His expression softened, a little smile curving up his lips. “Yeah.”

“Was I... ridiculous?” It wasn’t like I’d gotten a look at my feathers. I’d sounded high pitched, and the world had felt so big and me so little within it.

He snorted. “You were beautiful.”

When he leaned down and kissed my lips, I almost believed him.