YA Fantasy about a hunt for a lost fortune, sky pirates, found families, with a m/m slowish burn romance

Thomas Gil spent his nights stealing knowledge.

He roosted in rafters far above echoing lecture halls, the darkness shrouding him as he perched—knees curled tight to his chest and sore arms wrapped around skinny legs. The cool stone at his back was often rough-edged, digging into his protruding shoulder blades to leave harsh imprints like scattered kisses against his skin. He would coil himself up, small as he could, and become little more than a shadow of a boy, despite the fact that he’d grown into his gangly limbs in all the years he’d performed these mad heists. He would rest his head upon his knees and listen to stolen lectures as chill air brushed his sweat-slicked skin.

The lecture halls were always vast, and his eyesight always poor. He never could read the chalk markings the professor scribbled for his students, whose parent’s paid for them to be here.

So Thomas listened.

He devoured.

He took every purloined word and stored it away in his weary skull.

“You should know by now the basic mechanism through which ship flight is possible,” lectured the ancient professor that night, far below in the subtly declining hall. “The magnetic currents of the earth run not only in the four cardinal directions but also zenith and nadir—up and down. Now, can anyone tell me why this matters?”

The students, overtired in this last evening session after a day brimming with classes, were silent.

Thomas clamped his chapped lips shut to keep the words from spilling from him. Words of expeditions to new lands and exploration of parts unknown. Of fresh wind through thick, curly hair and stars close enough to grasp.