The door gave a quiet sigh when Nia opened it, and morning stepped in as if it belonged—thin sun, clean wind, the smell of rope and tar and a thousand miles. The ship rolled through a small, indulgent swell and shook the dew from its rails. Andy followed her into the corridor with the Draconic Oathblade settled against his hip like a hawk testing its perch. The blade's runes still breathed with a slow ember of color—red feathering the fuller, blue sleeping along the edge, white caught like frost near the tip, and a warm, dun glow tucked against the spine where stone had left its signature. Beneath those familiar notes, the deeper two—dragon and phoenix—rested like old kings who had finally agreed to share a throne.
They climbed to the deck. Light poured along the planks in angled bands; gulls wrote short, rude messages in the sky. Sailcloth swelled and relaxed in long exhalations. Crewmen moved quietly, each with a reason not to notice how the air around the Everharts shimmered as if heat lived there. They did not stare, sailors being sailors, but they made a little more room than necessary as the pair passed, and that deference felt like a ripple from some deeper tide.
A figure came out of the shadow of the mainmast at a pace that was almost a run and then decided at the last instant to be a walk. Aurelia had pulled a dark, thin cloak around her shoulders as if it were armor and scandal both. Her hair was gathered in a knot that pretended not to be hurried, and her bare feet made no sound on the boards. The Hunter's tattoo above her heart—usually mute as ink—seemed to have decided it could glow if it wanted. It did not. But the skin over it was flushed, and she kept a hand there as though the mark had temperature now.
She took them in as if their shapes were a riddle, and then her mouth curved at the edges because she liked riddles. "If you keep radiating this kind of aura, Andy," she said softly, making his name a dare, "I don't know what's more dangerous—your enemies, or me getting pulled in."
Nia didn't stop walking; she let Andy draw even with her and then stepped half a pace in front of him, the Eternal Lumina Staff balanced in her hand like a scepter that refused to be heavy. The early sun turned the silverwork along its haft into weaving threads. "Careful," she said, light as linen and neat as a pin. "You don't know what it means to stand too close to him."
Aurelia's gaze dropped to the rise and fall of Andy's breath. She stepped in rather than away and reached, two fingers sliding the open collar of his shirt a little to the side so her knuckle could find the steady, treacherous drum beneath. Her touch was cool, her smile warm. "Maybe I want to know."
Andy's heart did not take the opportunity to behave. It threw itself at his ribs like it could win this argument through force. Gods, he thought, why does her confidence feel like someone leaning a bow against my throat? The Oathblade thrummed—a quiet, possessive warning or merely laughter, he couldn't tell.
Nia's hand came down, unhurried, and lifted Aurelia's with the firmness of someone moving a candle away from a curtain. "Don't flatter yourself," she murmured, and her mouth said gentle while her eyes said mine. "That heart has belonged to me long before you showed up."
Aurelia's lashes lowered. She leaned past Nia without retreating, lips close enough to Andy's ear that her breath rewrote his name there. "Late guest," she conceded, amused. "Sometimes the late ones burn the brightest."
Andy coughed, which was a polite way to describe the sound that escaped him. He raised both hands in surrender, palms out, grin lopsided and doomed. "You two are going to kill me before this new power does."
"If you die," Nia said, stepping into his space until he could smell the thin clean wedge of citrus that lived in her hair, "it will be from not handling me. Not her."
Aurelia's laugh was low, delighted. "Or maybe he'll realize one woman isn't enough." The tip of her finger traced the line of his forearm where wind had left a faint white sigil. It tingled as if remembering being air.
The system touched the inside of Andy's vision with a discreet bow, a chime so soft he felt it more than heard it:
[Bond Expansion Triggered: Aurelia — Eligible for Constellation Entry.] chime
[Requirement: Romantic Core Alignment (Anchor ↔ Candidate).]
[Visibility: Anchor only.]
His breath shortened. He did not look away from either of them, but the knowledge slid into him with the weight of a coin: heavy, real, stackable. Two fires, he thought, one steady flame, one wild spark. And me in the middle with tinder for bones.
The ocean insisted on being a metaphor and laid a glittering track of sun across the water that looked suspiciously like a blade.
"Why are you smiling?" Aurelia asked, catching the corner of his mouth tipping.
"Because you both terrify me for different reasons," he said honestly.
"Good," Nia replied.
"Excellent," Aurelia said at the same time.
Nia shifted—barely a shoulder, a fraction of a hip—and in that small movement claimed the space at Andy's left side the way a capital letter claims the start of a sentence. Aurelia refused the implied period and slipped to Andy's right with the feline exactness of a woman accustomed to tight alleys and tighter margins. They did not touch each other. They did not need to. The air between them had the tensile shine of a pulled thread.
A breeze walked along the deck and made a sound in the rigging like whispered laughter. One of the crew—an older man with a jaw like cut oak—glanced over and then busied himself with a rope he had arguably already tied. Another passed carrying a bucket and took the long way around a coil of line rather than through the field that had established itself around the Everhart triangle.
Aurelia's eyes skated along the Oathblade's runes with unapologetic curiosity. "So," she said, "the rumors will now be true. Silverblade with a sword that hums like a cathedral. Princess with a staff that makes dawn jealous. Is there a role for a Hunter who can't stop staring?"
Nia's smile cut like silk. "That depends. Are you staring at the sword or the man?"
"Both," Aurelia said cheerfully, then lowered her voice. "But if I say 'the man,' will you make me prove it?"
"I would enjoy making you prove it," Nia said, so pleasantly that the sentence became a velvet-wrapped gauntlet. She lifted two fingers and, without touching, realigned a lock of Aurelia's hair as if setting a gem straighter in its mount. "You're beautiful when you're honest."
Aurelia held her gaze and did not blink. "You're dangerous when you compliment me."
"I only compliment the truth." Nia returned the ghost of a bow.
They could have circled each other like that across a ballroom while chandeliers clapped themselves to pieces, and Andy would have applauded until his hands hurt. As it was, he looked for a way to put the flame out without being burned and found none, so he did the only useful thing he could think of: he reached out, set one hand lightly on Nia's shoulder and one on Aurelia's, and squeezed in turn. "Thank you," he said, and meant twenty things, and somehow the two words held all of them.
Nia's shoulder softened under his palm. Aurelia's shoulder went taut, then relaxed as if conceding she had not expected gratitude and found she liked it.
"Don't thank me yet," Aurelia said. "I haven't done anything you can say in public."
"Gods," Andy muttered, and the Oathblade made a noise that was definitely laughter.
Nia's eyes sparked. "We are in public."
"Barely," Aurelia said, and stepped half an inch closer because half an inch could be an ocean when it wanted.
The ship's bell marked the quarter-hour. Sun climbed and found the edges of their faces. The Constellation lattice he had seen in the cabin hovered at the edge of perception now, like the ghost of chalk lines after rain. He could sense Orion hanging invisibly over the deck—three strong points like nails, the slant of a blade, the round of a shield—and with every breath near these two women the charge ticked upward.
[Orion • Blade Path — Charge: 27% → 31%] chime
[Silent Channel: Stable.]
[Emotional Amplitude: Elevated.]
Nia's head turned just slightly, sensing what she could not see. "You're hearing something, aren't you," she said.
He nodded. "It likes… this."
"This?" Aurelia asked, eyebrows arched in wicked innocence. "Define this."
"The part where I cannot decide if I should run to the galley for coffee or jump overboard," Andy said.
"Mm. Good conflict." Aurelia's fingers grazed the inside of his wrist, a shockingly intimate brush that made him forget his own name for a second. "Don't run."
Nia intercepted the hand a second time—less possessive now, more… precise. She took Aurelia's fingers and set them on the hilt of the Oathblade instead, guiding her touch down the leather-wrapped grip to the guard. The blade's hum deepened under both their hands. "Touch what he wields," Nia said. "Not what you're not allowed to borrow."
Aurelia's eyes went bright, honest admiration shouldering aside flirtation for a breath. "It's heavier than it looks."
"It behaves," Andy said, grateful for a topic with a name. "Mostly."
"Like its owner," Nia murmured.
Aurelia laughed. "He behaves?"
"When properly motivated," Nia said, and both of them looked at him in a way that made him want to apologize for things he had not done yet.
Wind slid teeth into the sail and tugged. The ship leaned, recovered, carried on. A gull made a comment about mortality and dropped it into the water. The three of them stood in a geometry that none of them had agreed upon and all of them had made.
Aurelia released the sword and let her fingers fall to her side, but she didn't step back. "You did something to the sky," she said, finally letting the awe she had been denying leak into her voice. "I felt it in my bones. Like the world inhaled and forgot to exhale."
"She evolves everything she touches," Nia said, tilting her head toward Andy and choosing she because today the system was a woman to be managed. "Including him."
"And including me?" Aurelia asked, uncharacteristically careful on the last word.
Andy looked at her, and the system answered his look, a thread of cool light across his sight:
[Candidate: Aurelia]
[Eligibility: Confirmed] chime
[Constraint: Anchor must establish Romantic Core Alignment with Candidate.]
[Partner Visibility: Deferred until Entry.]
[Note: Mutual respect improves stability; rivalry increases charge.]
"You're both trouble," he said, because he could not read any of that out loud and also because it was true.
Aurelia's smile sharpened. "We're your trouble."
"My favorite kind," he conceded, and there—unexpectedly—Nia's expression gentled into something amused and forgiving and a little victorious, as if he had managed to set a plate exactly where she preferred it on a table full of breakables.
The deckhand with the oak jaw ambled closer and touched the brim of his hat at a point in air a polite distance away. "Beggin' pardon, m'lord, m'lady," he said, with the solid gravity of a man who had seen everything twice. "Galley says the coffee's ready, if the stars can do without you for ten minutes."
"Unlikely," Nia said. "But we'll risk it."
Aurelia's eyes flicked to the old sailor and then back to Andy, a strategy moving across her face like cloud across the sun. She stepped in—not touching now, but so close the heat off her became part of his weather. Her voice dropped, the ship's wind stealing most of it, leaving only what was necessary. "You don't get to pretend you didn't hear me last night," she said. "Through the wall. And you don't get to pretend you didn't enjoy that I heard."
Nia's chin lifted half an inch, cheeks blooming with a pride that ate shame for breakfast. "He's my fiancé," she said, which was both answer and verdict. "I don't hide what we are."
"I'm not asking you to hide," Aurelia returned, almost gentle now. "I'm asking him to see me."
Andy's ribs felt two sizes too small. He set his hand—carefully, deliberately—on Nia's waist and then reached the other toward Aurelia, palm up. The choice was not a choice. The gesture was an invitation. "I see you," he said. "Both of you. And I'm trying very hard not to make promises with wind in my head."
Aurelia looked at his offered hand as if it were a map out of a city she'd been lost inside for years. She didn't take it—yet—but her fingertips hovered over it like a bird considering a landing. "Then don't promise," she said. "Act."
The system nodded like a tutor who had just heard a correct answer:
[Requirement Clarified.] chime
[Romantic Core Alignment (Anchor ↔ Aurelia): Pending.]
[Orion • Belt Path — Charge: 0% → 6%]
[Orion • Blade Path — Charge: 31% → 34%]
Nia's eyes narrowed—not angry, not even jealous now, just calculated, as if measuring a wall for a window. She turned her face toward the wind and then back to Aurelia. "This ship is small," she said. "If you intend to… act… do it without insulting me."
Aurelia's mouth softened. "I don't intend to insult you. Ever."
"Good." Nia inclined her head like a queen acknowledging terms. "Then we will not be enemies."
"Rivals, then," Aurelia suggested, eyes alight.
Nia's smile was exquisite. "For now."
Andy wanted to thank someone—gods, fate, the ship, the coffee—but all he managed was a slightly strangled, "Shall we?"
"We shall," Nia said, taking his left arm with the unselfconscious grace of someone claiming a country by standing in it.
Aurelia looked at the offered right hand again and, this time, let her fingertips rest there—but only for a heartbeat. Enough to be a promise, not enough to be a theft. "Try not to pour the coffee on yourself while looking at me," she murmured.
"I make no guarantees," he admitted, and the oak-jawed sailor smothered a grin that wasn't any of his business.
They started toward the companionway. The Oathblade hummed approval. The Eternal Lumina Staff shed a rim of pale along the planks that vanished before it could be named. Behind his eyes, the lattice glimmered and held. Above them, somewhere beyond the sky the eye could reach, Orion leaned into daylight like a prince who didn't care about propriety.
Halfway to the hatch, the system flicked one last card onto his table:
[Constellation Notice:] chime
Aurelia — Candidate:
• Affinity pinged: Hunt / Starwind
• Stability: High (when respected). Volatility: Rising (under neglect).
• Anchor advisory: Do not confuse patience with distance.
Andy let out a breath that might have been a laugh. Noted, he thought toward the part of himself that heard things no one else could. And—thank you.
"Who are you thanking?" Nia asked, catching the shape of gratitude on his face.
"You," he said, because it was not a lie. He felt her press fractionally closer. He allowed himself to lean that fraction back.
Aurelia fell into step on his other side, shoulder just out of contact, eyes tipped toward the hard blue line where the sea made a bargain with the sky. "If we're doing breakfast," she said, brisk suddenly, practical to cover the quake under her steadiness, "we should do training after. I want to see what this 'Dragon–Phoenix' looks like when it isn't pretending to be nice."
Nia's smile was all weapon. "Bring your best. He needs worthy targets."
"Oh, I plan to be his favorite," Aurelia said lightly, and if she meant in battle, none of them corrected her.
They disappeared below, bright as trouble and twice as useful. The deck filled the space they left with the modest sounds of a ship that liked the people walking on it. Far forward, the oak-jawed sailor shook his head, set his hands to the rope, and said to the sea in general, "Poor lad," with the particular sympathy of a man who had never once been that lucky.
Deep behind Andy's eyes, the stars arranged themselves to watch. And in the dark pocket of the galley where steam raveled like silk and cups waited like mouths, the day began again, ready to taste whatever fire they brought it.