Noah and Kelvin walked out of the room still talking.

"I’m just saying," Kelvin said, the Auxiliary Assistant arms folded neatly against his back in their resting position, "the man had no actual powers. He was just rich and angry and incredibly committed to a bit."

"He was also terrifying," Noah said.

"He was terrifying because he was rich and angry and committed to the bit. That’s my entire point." Kelvin gestured with his cybernetic arm. "I am rich. I am occasionally angry. And I am now walking around with four arms, a technopathic spine and the ability to wake up dead machines." He looked at Noah. "I am objectively more Batman than Batman."

"Batman’s dad is dead," Noah said. "Your dad is alive."

"My dad is alive and running a multi-billion credit weapons division for the EDF and we haven’t spoken in two years because we are the same person and we cannot be in the same room without the gravitational pull of our combined egos collapsing into something that destroys everything nearby." Kelvin said this with complete factual delivery. "Which is arguably worse than dead. Dead fathers are tragic. My father is just insufferable."

"You miss him," Noah said.

"I do not miss him."

"You literally just described him as a multibillion credit weapons genius with an ego that has gravitational pull."

"That’s not affection that’s a threat assessment."

"You sound exactly like him when you say things like that."

Kelvin opened his mouth. Closed it. Pointed at Noah. "That was cruel and I want it noted."

Noah was still laughing when they turned the corner and nearly walked into Sophie.

She looked at them both. At the fact that they were walking together. At the specific quality of the laughter, the kind that came from somewhere real rather than being performed for a room.

She smiled. The full one, not the composed version she wore in briefings.

"My boys," she said.

"We’re not your boys," Kelvin said.

"You absolutely are." She fell into step between them, taking both their arms without asking. "And thank God. I was beginning to think I’d have to physically lock you two in a room."

"We handled it," Noah said.

"You handled it," Sophie said, with the tone of someone who knew exactly how they had handled it and found it both predictable and endearing. "Men. You fight, you sit on a corridor floor apparently, you say four sentences, and then everything is fine." She shook her head. "Do you know how long it takes women to process something like that? Weeks. Months. There are conversations that started in the academy that Lila and I are still technically having."

"You and Lila?" Noah said.

"Don’t look so surprised." Sophie glanced at him. "We’ve come a long way."

"You used to not speak in the same hallway," Kelvin said.

"Upper classman energy," Sophie said. "I was insufferable in year three. I know that now." She paused. "I knew it then too but I was committed to the bit."

"Gravitational ego pull," Noah said, looking at Kelvin.

Kelvin pointed at him again. "Still cruel."

They kept walking, the corridor warm around them, the distant pulse of the Eternal Pyre’s molten energy running through the walls at its usual rhythm. Somewhere ahead of them Ares personnel moved through their own routines, unbothered by the three humans occupying their corridor.

"Kelvin," Sophie said, after a moment.

"I know," he said.

"She’s not going to come to you."

"I know that too."

"And she shouldn’t have to. You need to go find her and say the actual words, not the engineering version of the actual words where you explain why your behavior was technically logical and then apologize for the emotional impact as a secondary clause."

Kelvin was quiet for a second. "Is that what I do."

"Every single time," Sophie and Noah said together.

Kelvin looked between them. "I hate that you’ve both catalogued this about me."

"She loves you more than anyone I’ve ever watched love someone," Sophie said. "But she’s been fighting to be seen as herself for a long time and you accidentally made her feel like an invention again." She squeezed his arm. "Go find her. Say the words. Not the logic. The words."

Kelvin exhaled. "She has Shade."

"Yes," Noah said.

"Shade could theoretically end me."

"Also yes," Noah said.

"But you’re still going," Sophie said.

Kelvin squared his shoulders. "I’m still going." He glanced sideways. "After I mentally prepare for approximately ten more minutes."

"You’ve been mentally preparing since the training room," Noah said.

"Then I’m nearly ready," Kelvin said.

Sophie laughed, the sound of it carrying down the corridor, and Noah thought about how long it had been since they had been three people walking somewhere with nothing more pressing than the next thing they felt like saying. Years probably. The academy maybe. Before the EDF and the vanguard and the Purge and Kruel and all of it.

He was still thinking about that when every speaker on the Eternal Pyre activated simultaneously.

The sound came from everywhere. Not from a specific direction, just present, filling every corridor and room and bay on the ship at the exact same moment, the way the Ares fleet did everything, collectively and without half measures.

"ATTENTION." Aurelius’s voice, theatrical and completely unbothered by the concept of volume control. "This is your king speaking. Effective immediately, all mission planning, tactical discussions, threat assessments, and anything that could reasonably be described as preparation for imminent violence is hereby suspended until further notice."

Sophie stopped walking.

"A celebration is commencing in the Grand Atrium in thirty minutes." A pause. "Attendance is not optional. I have fourteen wives and they have been patient with your collective brooding for long enough. The Eternal Pyre does not do brooding. The Eternal Pyre does fire and music and dancing that defies conventional sense and I will not have my guests leaving this fleet without having experienced at least one of those things properly."

Another pause.

"That is all. Dress nicely. Theron will be very disappointed if you don’t."

The speakers clicked off.

The corridor was silent for a second.

"Thirty minutes," Kelvin said.

"You now have a deadline," Sophie said, looking at him. "Go find Diana."

Kelvin went.

---

The Grand Atrium was not a room.

It was what happened when a civilization that had been building their home for fifty years decided that the space for celebration deserved the same engineering attention as the space for everything else. The ceiling was high enough that the upper reaches of it were lost in the light rather than the dark, the illumination coming from the molten veins in the walls which had been somehow amplified for the occasion, throwing everything in warm gold and deep red. The floor was clear enough to see the energy channels running beneath it, pulsing in rhythm with the music that had started before any of them arrived.

The music was the first thing that hit.

Not loud exactly. Present. The kind of sound that found the space between your heartbeat and synchronized with it before you noticed it was happening. Deep resonant notes from instruments that Noah had no name for, layered over rhythms that the Ares people around them were already moving to with the ease of people for whom this was as natural as breathing.

There were hundreds of them. The full population of the Eternal Pyre’s central vessel, dressed in everything from formal Ares court wear to practical clothing that simply moved better than usual. Children ran between adult legs. Older Ares personnel found seats at the edges and watched with the particular satisfaction of people who had seen this many times and found it better each time.

Aurelius was in the center of all of it, naturally, one of his wives on each arm, his court robes replaced by something that moved better and caught the light differently, his red gold hair loose. He saw the Eclipse team arrive and his face did the thing it did, the full commitment to joy that made rooms feel larger.

"You came dressed nicely!" he called across the space. "Mostly!"

Kelvin, who was standing next to Diana and appeared to still be in one piece and to have both her hands in his, looked down at himself. "I think he means me."

Diana looked at his shirt. "He definitely means you."

"I was busy," Kelvin said. "I have four arms now."

"That’s not a clothing excuse," Diana said. But she was smiling. Not the forced smile from the training room. The actual one, the one that went all the way. Whatever Kelvin had said when he found her, he had said the words and not the engineering version and it had been enough.

Noah caught Kelvin’s eye across the space.

Kelvin gave him a small nod. The kind that meant handled.

Noah looked away before it became a moment.

Aurelius’s wife Lyanna appeared at his elbow with two glasses of something that glowed faintly at the rim. She offered one to Noah and one to Sophie and said, "Ares fire wine. It tastes like the name suggests but less dangerously than the name suggests."

"Less dangerously," Sophie said.

"The first glass is fine," Lyanna said. "The second glass requires a decision."

Sophie took hers. Noah took his.

Lyanna looked at Noah with the particular assessment of a woman who had been married to Aurelius long enough to have developed very good instincts about people. "He talks about you, you know. More than most."

"Aurelius talks about everything more than most," Noah said.

"True," Lyanna said. "But the way he talks about you is different." She looked across the atrium to where Aurelius was now apparently teaching one of the Eclipse task force members an Ares dance pattern that involved considerably more footwork than the member had expected. "He finds most people interesting. He finds you." She considered the word. "Necessary. Like something the situation requires." She looked back at Noah. "He doesn’t say that about many people."

She moved away before Noah could respond to that.

Sophie was watching him. "What did she say?"

"Something I’ll think about later," he said.

The celebration moved the way Aurelius celebrations moved, which was to say it moved like weather, building and shifting and pulling people into it whether they intended to be pulled or not. Lucas was in a conversation with two Ares military personnel that had started as tactical exchange and had somehow become something more animated. Jayden was standing at the edge of the main floor watching everything with the expression of someone recalibrating their understanding of what a fleet could be. Seraleth was dancing, because of course she was, her height making her visible above everyone else, moving with the natural grace of someone from a world where celebration had different rules and finding that Ares rules were compatible enough.

Diana pulled Kelvin onto the floor and he went with the resigned energy of a man who knew his footwork was bad and had decided to commit to it anyway, the Auxiliary Assistant arms folding neatly against his back to give him clearance.

Angel found Noah at some point and stood beside him for a while without saying anything, watching Seraleth and Diana and the Ares people moving to the music.

"This is not what I expected," she said.

"The fleet?"

"Any of it." She looked at him sideways. "Two weeks ago I was running containment operations on Blood Fangs in the Eastern Cardinal. Now I’m on a ship the size of a city watching my task force personnel learn alien dance patterns before we go fight the thing that killed two million people." She took a sip of her fire wine. "Life is genuinely insane."

"Yeah," Noah said.

"Are you scared," she said. Not gently. Just directly, the way Angel asked things.

Noah looked at the celebration around them. At Kelvin catastrophically failing an Ares dance step and Diana catching him before he went down and both of them laughing about it. At Lucas having apparently agreed to something tactical with the Ares military personnel that involved a handshake. At Aurelius at the center of all of it, incandescent and present and completely himself.

"Yeah," Noah said.

Angel nodded like that was the right answer. She clinked her glass against his and they both drank.

---

It was later, the celebration still running but quieter now, some people having found seats and conversation replacing dancing in most corners, when Sophie appeared at Noah’s side with a look on her face that he recognized as the look of someone who had coordinated something.

"Come with me," she said.

"Where," he said.

"Just come."

She took his hand and he let himself be led, which in retrospect he should have identified as the first warning sign. They went through a side corridor off the atrium, then another, then through a door into a smaller room that was clearly one of the Eternal Pyre’s lounge spaces, warm and comfortable and currently containing Lila, Seraleth, and Angel arranged with the look of people who had been there for a few minutes already and had been waiting.

Noah looked at them.

He looked at Sophie.

He looked back at them.

"We are here," Sophie said, closing the door behind them, "to honor his royal highness King Aurelius’s decree. Fun and pleasure only tonight." She sat down with the composed ease of someone who had planned this and was comfortable with the plan. "No mission. No Kruel. No forge items. No system notifications. Just this."

Seraleth was already smiling. Lila had her arms crossed but the corner of her mouth was doing something.

Angel leaned against the wall with her fire wine and looked at Noah with the expression of someone who was very much on the right side of this particular situation.

Noah looked at all four of them.

He looked at the door.

He looked back.

"I’m in trouble, aren’t I," he said.