“Mei, main,” Fly said last, glancing her way. “You’re with me.”
She met his eyes, calm and sure. “Always.”
Hollis barked again from the chase boat. “Let’s go. Harvard’s already itching. Don’t give them an inch.”
Fly eased Valor off the dock, lines coming in clean, the boat sliding free like she’d been waiting for it. The bay opened up around them, bright and generous. Wind filled the sails just enough to feel alive.
The Crimson Star pushed early. Too early. Fly saw it in the angle of their approach, the way they tried to muscle the boat instead of letting it run. He adjusted without thinking, a subtle correction at the tiller, Mei answering instantly, trimming the main with practiced precision.
“Pressure building,” she said quietly.
“I see it,” Fly replied.
Valor surged forward, smooth and eager, cutting through the water like she knew where she was going. Than shifted his weight a fraction, Joss followed the movement, Bridge calling out chop and spacing from the bow.
They rounded the first mark ahead, clean and fast.
Hollis whooped from the chase boat. “That’s it. Keep it tight. Make them chase you.”
Fly didn’t smile, but he felt the satisfaction settle in his chest. This was what it was supposed to feel like when everything worked. Crew in sync. Boat alive. The Star fell back, even though they were doing everything right.
They stretched the lead on the next leg. Fly rode the wind instead of fighting it, reading the surface, adjusting for every small change. Mei stayed locked in with him, quiet and brilliant, hands never still.
Then something shifted.
Not enough to matter yet. Just enough to notice.
The water ahead smoothed out strangely, the rhythm between waves off by half a beat. The wind brushed his face, then faded, then came back sharper. Valor rolled once beneath him, subtle but present.
Fly filed it away.
He glanced toward the horizon, then back to the water around them. No reason to change anything. Not yet.
Hold this, he told himself silently. Just keep an eye on it.
They crossed the next mark with Harvard well behind, Valor cutting clean and fast, crew tight and confident.
Hollis’s voice crackled again, pleased and smug. “Beautiful, Gallagher. That’s how you win races.”
Fly acknowledged without looking back. His focus stayed on the water, on the way it breathed under the hull, on the timing that felt just a touch off.
They were winning. He was still listening, and he wasn’t going to stop.
The lead stretched clean behind them, Harvard’s hull shrinking, their wake rough and impatient. Valor ran light and quick, exactly what a Twenty-Six was built for, skimming instead of digging in.
Fly kept one hand on the tiller and one eye on the water.
The wind arrived early, then late, then in a pattern that didn’t repeat. Something heavier pushing from underneath, out of rhythm with what was happening on the surface. Valor answered it with a shallow roll, subtle but insistent, like she was clearing her throat.
Fly adjusted a fraction. Mei mirrored him without a word. The boat steadied, but the feeling didn’t leave.
He glanced east, farther out than he had before. The horizon looked clean. Just a faint darkening where the sky met the water, distant enough to ignore if you didn’t know better.
He knew better.
Storm energy didn’t need to be visible to matter. A system far offshore could still send its pressure ahead of it, long and deep, reshaping the bay from the bottom up. He’d surfed days like this. Blue skies overhead, chaos traveling invisibly beneath the surface.
The water flattened again between pulses.
