Harbor (On the Wind #3)

46. Tybalt

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

TYBALT

W e didn’t make it out of bed that afternoon. After the first time, I had him again, slow and easy with him on his back, his gaze hazy as he watched me ride him.

I let my hands roam everywhere, kept my kisses soft, keener on being with him than chasing the harried release I’d needed the very moment he gave in after so long waiting.

His scar was still pink on his skin, but it was healed—didn’t even seem to bother him much. And I wanted him.

It was still terrifying. Unrelenting nervousness tugged at my thoughts, reminding me that the moment I gave into this feeling, let myself get comfortable, I would have the rug pulled from under my feet.

The only thing was, I couldn’t believe that Orestes would be the one tugging on it. He stared at me with shining golden adoration, smiled hopefully whenever I said I loved him back. It was a vulnerable kind of hope, and that was overwhelming too.

I didn’t want to let him down, and now that I knew I could —gods, the very prospect scared me.

My breath hitched, my arms shaky as I braced myself on his chest and lifted my hips. I let my weight fall, and his dick sank deep into my ass. A stifled moan punched out of me. My bottom lip trembled, so I bit it.

“Tybalt?” Orestes’s sleepy smile turned into a pucker of concern. He pushed up on one arm, the other tightening around my hips to drag me in.

I shook my head, holding onto his shoulders to move faster. The hand holding him up, he moved between us. With a loose grip on my cock, he stroked me just to the edge. He craned upward, lifting his chin, and I met his need with my own, my mouth crashing into his.

When I came, my moan escaped as a sob against his lips. His arm around me dragged me in, over and over, his cock rutting into me until he—he grunted too, biting my jaw as he spilled inside me.

He kept his nose there, right against my neck, stroking back and forth so soothingly that even with my hitched breathing, the fear that still gripped my heart, it only took a few minutes for me to go slack in his arms, burying in the crook of his neck where it was safe.

“What’s the matter?” he asked in a low rumble I felt against my chest.

My brow pulled down with my frown, but I kept it pressed against his skin. “You don’t want to go home?”

“Tybalt—” He sighed softly, easing me back. His broad hand cupped my cheek, covering half my face. “You’re my home.”

I laughed, and it sounded wet and dismal. “But you don’t even like Urial?—”

“I like it fine.”

I made a sharp, short sound of protest, even when he leaned in to kiss me. It was soft and quick, and he pulled back almost at once.

“I spent my life fighting on the wall, Tybalt.” His thumb stroked beneath my eye. “There is nothing in Urial worse than that, even the damned snow.”

I swallowed. “Are you sure?”

One thing I was sure of: I wasn’t worth leaving his whole life behind.

But when he nodded and drew me in for another kiss, sweet and lingering, I clung to him all the tighter. My arms wrapped around him. I pressed my heels into the small of his back.

If he let me keep him, I meant to, and damn it, he said he was mine.

We barely slept that night, but I almost couldn’t let myself. If I did, surely I’d wake and he’d be gone and I’d be alone again or it all would’ve been a dream or?—

I didn’t know, but I spent the whole night, even when sleep hung heavy around us, dragging him closer. He’d adjust on the bed, and I’d tug on his arm until he draped it around me.

Admittedly, it was easier to sleep with the heavy reminder that he was still there.

In the morning, I was rather put out to wake to a hard pounding at the door. “Come in,” I called, voice muffled between by the drawn curtains around the bed. I jerked them aside as a servant opened the door.

“His Majesty requests your presence this morning.”

I huffed. “I’m sure he does.”

I sounded like a sullen child, but I couldn’t think of a person I wanted to see less, or anyone I needed to see more. As we’d lain beside each other, Orestes’s fingertips dancing over my hip and waist, he’d told me about my father’s duplicity—how ready he’d been not only to cast me aside but let me die.

It was almost worse, that he didn’t have the spine to see it done himself.

I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew that—that with a court so focused on propriety as ours, filicide would not be taken lightly. Perhaps they wouldn’t trust me, but I had—I had more supporters now than ever before, and I could not turn my back and pretend that I knew nothing of this, wait until it killed me and everyone I loved.

I waved a hand. “Go. We’ll dress before we see him, at least.”

Orestes stayed close to my side until we were in the corridor, then, he stalked forward like the angriest guard, and there—Mercutio stood against the far wall, pushing off it with his shoulders.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, narrow-eyed and wary.

Mercutio shrugged. His hand fell to the hilt of his sword as he fell into step beside me. “I like to keep my finger on the pulse at court. I thought you might need backup.”

My tongue slipped between my lips, pressed tight. The way Orestes and Mercutio were behaving, I wondered if I should’ve armed myself better for whatever was coming.

“I like him, you know.” Mercutio was staring at the mess of Orestes’s dark hair, wavy and fixed with feathers.

My lips twitched, because I liked him too, and I could not help but smile at my luck. “Do you?”

When I glanced sidelong at him, I almost expected Mercutio to withdraw his statement and call me an ass for playing games with him. But our friendship had never been that. We understood each other; it was why he had so little patience with me when I failed to act.

Mercutio laughed. “Truly, I do. You suit each other. He’s all”—he waved his hand as Orestes’s back—“stubborn. Large enough to sit on you through your next tantrum.”

I snorted. “He’s welcome to sit on me whenever he likes.”

Strangely, I didn’t mind the idea of all that mass of him atop me. He could sit on my face while I gripped his thighs and sucked his cock and rolled his heavy balls around on my tongue and?—

We were going to see my father.

Obviously, I needed to think of far more sobering things. Things like loss.

I bit my lip. “And do you think I can keep him?”

His expression went serious once more. “I think there are some things—some people—worth changing the whole world for. Few of us have the power to do so, but you, my prince, might.”

I bit the edges of my tongue. It wasn’t the first time he’d wanted me to do something, be better, but staring at Orestes’s shoulders as he pushed the enormous doors of the throne room open, it was the first time I wanted to try.

As Orestes stood aside for me, I found myself alone in the doorway. Like a ghost, Mercutio had drifted off as soon as we crossed the threshold, and I lost sight of him in the gathered crowd.

I took a shaky breath and stepped forward, and Orestes stayed right behind me. I thought, if he had to, he’d tear his way through the whole throne room to keep me safe.

“Tybalt,” my father said shortly.

At his side, just below the throne, was Lord Eric. He was free from bonds, but I was pleased to see he looked tired and disheveled. I hoped he’d spent the night in a cold, wet dungeon.

“Father.” I lifted my chin to look at him. “That man is a murderer. He should be in chains.”

“Am I to take the word of a lecher and his oversized whore for that?”

I balked. We didn’t?—

We might think these things, at court, but we didn’t say them.

I caught Orestes’s wrist when he moved to defend me, and he stilled at my side, though I could tell by his flexed hand that he fantasized about smashing his fist into my father’s smug face.

“You’re to take the word of your son,” I said, and my voice only shook a little.

Penelope’s didn’t. She appeared at my side in a moment. I wasn’t alone in this.

“And your wife,” she called, louder than I had, her voice stronger.

She looked marvelous, wrapped in gold. Olive wasn’t there, but that was good. She didn’t need to hear this.

And Penelope? She looked more suited to the throne than either me or my father.

“I won’t see you defend him,” she snapped at the king. “Eric killed my husband.” She stood firm without looking at her brother, head high, shoulders back, as if it cost her nothing to say it.

“I’m your husband,” Father blustered, his beard shaking in his fury. He rose out of his seat, but Penelope stood her ground.

“And I never would’ve married you if not for his conspiracy to murder the man I loved and my daughter’s father.” Her voice was cold, but her eyes colder still.

“A conspiracy I believe the king was privy to,” Orestes said lowly. It wasn’t for the whole court, but Penelope was close enough to hear. My father was too.

But Father didn’t look at Orestes when he stalked forward, and I realized then that it wasn’t because he was Nemedan, or even because in his eyes, Orestes debased himself with me. He was afraid of Orestes, and when he raised his hand, it was not to strike his accuser but the woman in front of him.

I rushed forward, Penelope balked.

And Father’s hand never landed.

He gasped, sharp and pained. When he looked down, so did I, to the gleaming steel tip of a sword sticking out of his chest.

Behind him, Mercutio grunted as he pulled his sword free, and blood soaked down the front of the king’s doublet.

“Father!” I rushed forward to catch him.

He fell to his knees, clutching the hole in his chest—a hole that went right through him and gushed with blood at every squeeze of his wounded heart.

But there, on his knees, he jerked away from me. He glared, spitting and furious, as if I’d stabbed him myself.

As if I would.

As if I?—

As if I’d brought Mercutio with me into the throne room.

My father fell back, his final breaths rattling, but not so loud as the sword Mercutio threw to the floor. It rang loudly as the guards rushed him, but he put his hands on his head, one of them stained with blood.

I watched, mouth gaping like a dimwitted fish, as the guards grabbed his arms. Tossing his weapon away might’ve saved his life—even the king’s guard hesitated to slaughter an unarmed man. They lacked Mercutio’s resolve.

“A man, even a king,” Mercutio said as my father listed to the side, “ought not raise his hand to his wife.”

The king fell. He took no more breaths, and his blood spread wide across the flagstones. It stained Mercutio’s knees when the guards shoved him to the ground.

I didn’t think for a second that Penelope’s safety was why Mercutio killed my father. I saw in his eyes, so steadily trained on mine, a command: Make this count.

And I sat, stunned, bloodied hands open on my lap, and sobbed for a father who’d wished me dead first and the friend they seized for doing it.