Eris POV

The days following that brief, quiet exchange with Rubeus felt like a slow unraveling. Each moment on the ship was marked by a quiet distance between them, though something unspoken lingered in the air, like a tension that neither of them knew how to address. Rubeus had said she belonged here, but it was hard for her to believe those words fully. The crew treated her with respect, but she still felt like a foreigner in this life.

Still, something about Rubeus’s calm confidence, the way he looked at her in those quiet moments, made her feel like maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t as lost as she had...