My answer was yes.
That part was easy. I'd known it since Hana's knock, maybe since Elysia's light sank into my chest that morning.
The hard part was saying it to three knights, two of whom had just climbed out of my wardrobe.
We let go of each other slowly. Hana wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Marika pretended to fix her braid. Naomi pretended the last five minutes hadn't happened, which wasn't going well, judging by the color of her ears.
I cleared my throat.
"I've decided."
Three heads turned at once. It was like watching hounds hear the word "dinner."
"All three of you," I said. "Tonight."
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Hana pressed both hands over her mouth. Marika said, "Huh," like I'd just told her it might rain. And Naomi did what Naomi always does with good news.
She went looking for the problem in it.
"Those are your only three."
"I know."
"It's permanent."
"I know."
"You can't undo it. Ever."
"Big Sis. I'm the one who explained it to you."
Her jaw set. "Then think. You'll marry someday. More than once, if the kingdom has any say in it. What happens when you need a place for a wife and you've already spent all three on us?"
That stopped the room.
Hana lowered her hands. "She's right," she said softly. "Fabian, a wife might need it more than we do. She'd be the one beside you, and we'd—"
"Some baroness's daughter who carries a plow horse on each shoulder?" Marika crossed her arms. "She'll be fine."
"Marika."
"What? She will."
I looked at the three of them. Three knights in their nightclothes, standing in my bedroom, trying to talk me out of the exact thing they'd each knocked on my door to ask for.
"Anyone I marry, I'll meet someday," I said. "Maybe. Eventually. If Big Sis ever stops burning the letters."
"Filing," Naomi said. "Near the fireplace."
"You three, I've had my whole life." I shrugged, which is hard to do casually when your heart is going that fast. "Whoever comes later can get in line."
Naomi studied me. It was the look she gave me before a spar, the one that found every weak spot in my stance.
"You've thought about this."
"For about four hours," I said. "That's a personal record."
Marika snorted. Naomi didn't. But she stopped arguing, and with Naomi, that's as good as winning.
"Then," Hana said, very gently, "I'll go first."
She said it the way she said everything. Soft, warm, reasonable.
That was what made it dangerous.
Marika turned on her. "Excuse me? Why you?"
"I knocked first."
"You knocked first and then hid in a wardrobe!"
"So did you."
"I was ambushed. There's a difference."
"Head of house," Naomi said.
Both of them stared at her.
Naomi folded her arms. "It's the proper order. The head of house goes first."
"That's not a rule," Marika said.
"It is now."
"You can't just make up rules!"
"I'm the Countess of Greymark. I make up rules all day."
I had a feeling this could go on until sunrise, and two of them already owed sixty laps when it came. So I did the one thing nobody in this house ever expects me to do.
I settled it.
"You knocked in an order," I said. "That's the order. Sis Hana. Then Sis Marika. Then Big Sis."
Hana lit up like a candle.
Marika opened her mouth to argue, did the math, and closed it again. Then a slow, terrible smile spread across her face, and she turned it on Naomi.
"Second," she said. "Ahead of the head of house."
Naomi looked at me. I looked back. She had knocked last, and we both knew it.
"...Fair," she said.
"Ha," said Marika.
"Seventy laps."
"It was sixty!"
"It was."
Marika made a noise like a kettle and stopped talking. Hana patted her arm.
Which left one small problem.
"Also," I said, "I have no idea how to do this."
Three blank looks.
"I've had magic for about half a day," I explained. "The only time it's done anything, Elysia did all the work. I didn't cast anything. I just stood there and got glowed at."
"Well," Hana said slowly, "how did the skills come to you in the first place?"
"They just showed up. In my head. Names first, then what they do."
"Then start there," Naomi said. "Find the name."
It sounded simple. Most of Naomi's orders do. Then you try them and find out they're not simple at all, and that she knew it the whole time.
I closed my eyes.
It was there.
Not like a word I'd memorized. More like a word I'd always known and never needed until now. 「Covenant」, sitting quietly at the back of my mind, the way a sword sits in its sheath.
I reached for it.
Something in my chest pulled.
It didn't hurt. It felt like water pouring from a full pitcher, a slow, warm tipping. I knew without anyone telling me that the water was mana, and the pitcher was me.
Then the words came.
They didn't arrive all at once. They unrolled one line at a time, like they'd been written somewhere inside me all along and I was only now learning to read them.
They weren't my words. I don't talk like that. Nobody in this house talks like that, except maybe Odile.
"Fabian," Hana breathed. "Look."
I opened my eyes.
A circle of light was spreading across the floorboards under our feet. Lines curved and crossed inside it, careful and precise, like someone with a very steady hand was drawing it. It ringed both of us and stopped just short of the bed.
It was white.
Of course it's white. White was the lowest tier, the color every beginner casts first. My very first spell, and it came in the apprentice color.
But it wasn't only white.
Threads of gold ran through it. Thin as hair, woven between the lines, catching the candlelight like the trim on Odile's robes.
Gold was the highest tier there was.
"Is it supposed to do that?" Marika whispered from over by the wardrobe.
"No," said Naomi.
Hana didn't look at the circle at all. She was looking at me.
I held out my hand. I'm not sure why. The words didn't tell me to. It just felt wrong to say them without holding on to something.
She took it with both of hers.
"By the light of Elysia, I offer my covenant," I said. My voice sounded strange in my own ears, steadier than I felt. "Where you stand, I will know. What you suffer, I will feel. What strength is mine, I give to you. It cannot be broken, and it will not end."
The circle brightened.
"Will you take it?"
Hana opened her mouth. Closed it. Her eyes were already shining.
"Yes," she said. Then her voice cracked, and she tried again. "Yes. I decided to look after you when I was ten years old. Let me keep doing it."
The gold threads lifted off the floor.
They rose like sparks from a hearth, drifted toward her, and sank into her chest. The same way Elysia's light had sunk into mine that morning.
Hana gasped. "Oh."
"Does it hurt?" Naomi was across the room in two steps.
"No. No, it's..." Hana searched for the word. "It feels like being held."
The circle faded. The floorboards went back to being floorboards.
And Hana was in my head.
That's the only way I can put it. I could feel exactly where she was. Which wasn't very impressive, since she was standing right in front of me, still holding my hand. But it was there anyway: a small, warm point, like a candle someone had lit inside my chest.
There was something else, too.
"Your feet are cold," I said.
Hana blinked. "...They are. How did you know that?"
I looked down. She was barefoot. She'd been barefoot this whole time, standing on cold floorboards so she could be first.
"I don't know," I said. "I just do."
"Hana." Naomi's voice was sharp. "Can you feel him?"
Hana closed her eyes. A slow smile spread across her face.
"He's right there."
"We can all see that," Marika said.
"No, I mean..." Hana opened her eyes, and they were wet again. "I can feel him being right there."
Nobody said anything after that. Nobody needed to.
Then Marika cleared her throat, very loudly, and marched into the middle of the room like she was walking out to a duel.
"Fine," she said. "My turn. Let's get this over with."
"You can uncross your arms," I said.
"They're comfortable."
I reached for 「Covenant」 again. It came easier this time. The pitcher tipped, the circle spread across the floor, white with its threads of gold, and Marika eyed it like it might bite her.
"Wait," she said. "Do I have to say something specific? Is there a script?"
"Say whatever you want. As long as it means yes."
"Fine."
I held out my hand. She stared at it, sighed through her nose, and uncrossed her arms to take it.
I said the words again. They didn't feel any less strange the second time.
"Will you take it?"
"I'm only doing this," Marika announced, "so Hana doesn't lord it over me for the rest of my life."
"I would never lord," Hana said.
"You'd lord quietly. With soup."
The circle flickered.
Not out. Just dimmer. The gold threads trembled and stayed where they were, like they were waiting for something.
Marika noticed. She narrowed her eyes at the floor. "What's it doing?"
"Waiting," I said. "That wasn't a yes, Sis."
"It was obviously a yes!"
"It was a complaint."
Her ears went pink. The tips first, then all the way down. She looked at the circle, then at Hana, then at Naomi, who was very carefully not saying anything. Then, finally, at me.
"...Yes," she muttered. Her grip on my hand tightened. "Yes. So you'll stop staring out the window every time I'm late coming back from the east road. It's annoying."
I didn't know she'd noticed that.
The circle blazed. The gold rose and sank into her, and Marika sucked in a sharp breath, like she'd stepped into a cold river.
A second candle lit inside my chest. Brighter than Hana's. Restless. It felt exactly like her.
Marika let go of my hand and flexed her fingers. She rolled her shoulders. Then she grabbed the bedpost to steady herself.
Crack.
Everyone looked at the bedpost.
A split ran down it, about as long as my hand.
"That was already cracked," Marika said.
"It was not."
"It was structurally disappointing."
"Sis."
"Fine! I feel..." She frowned, hunting for it. "Lighter. Like I slept a whole night and ate Hana's breakfast twice."
Naomi's eyes went from the bedpost to me. "Stronger."
"A little," Marika admitted. "Don't make it a thing."
It was already a thing. I could tell from Naomi's face that she'd spend the rest of the night thinking about what "a little" meant for a knight who was already the fastest in Greymark.
But I wasn't really thinking about that.
Because the pitcher was getting lighter.
The room tilted. Not much. Just a gentle lean, like the floor was a boat and someone had stepped off one side. I planted my feet and waited for it to stop. It mostly did.
"Okay," I said. "Big Sis, you're—"
"You're dizzy," said Hana and Marika at exactly the same time.
I froze.
They were both staring at me. Not worried yet. Just certain, in a way they'd never been able to be before.
"I'm not—"
Two pairs of eyebrows went up.
"...Slightly dizzy," I said.
I'd been bound to two people for about three minutes, and I had already lost the ability to lie to them about how I felt.
I wasn't sure I'd thought this all the way through.
Naomi turned to me. I didn't need any covenant to know what she was about to say.
"Tomorrow."
"Now."
"Fabian."
"Big Sis."
"Mana fatigue kills people."
"Severe mana fatigue kills people. This is mild. I'm barely tilted."
"He's tilted," said Marika.
"He's a little tilted," Hana agreed, worry creeping into her voice. "Elysia preserve us, Fabian, at least sit down."
I didn't sit down.
I know. I know exactly what it looked like: the stubborn little brother, swaying on his feet, refusing to listen to the people who'd spent his whole life keeping him alive. I'd been that brother plenty of times. There was a hunger strike once. It lasted until lunch.
But this time I had a reason.
"If we stop now, you're the only one outside it," I said. "The rest of us know where everyone is, and you're standing at the gate again. Waiting."
Her face didn't move. Her hands did. They curled into fists at her sides.
"You always put yourself last," I said. "You eat after the guards. You go to bed after the whole house is asleep." My voice wobbled. I ignored it. "Fine. Be last. But last is still tonight."
The silence went on for a long time.
Long enough for Hana to start crying again, quietly. Long enough for Marika to look away and pretend she wasn't about to.
Then Naomi let out a breath.
"Sit," she said.
"Big Sis—"
"Sit down while you do it. That's the deal."
I sat on the edge of my bed. It was a good deal. My knees had been considering it anyway.
Naomi knelt in front of me.
She went down on one knee on the floorboards, the way a knight kneels before the Queen. Kneeling, she was finally at my eye level.
Almost. She was still a little taller.
Unbelievable.
I reached for 「Covenant」 a third time. It came slower now. The pitcher tipped, and there was less in it than before; I could feel the bottom getting closer. But the circle came anyway, white and threaded with gold, spreading around my feet and her knee.
If this is the cheapest tier, I don't want to meet the expensive ones.
I held out my hand. Naomi took it. Her palm was rough with sword calluses and completely steady. Mine wasn't.
"By the light of Elysia, I offer my covenant." I took a breath. "Where you stand, I will know. What you suffer, I will feel. What strength is mine, I give to you. It cannot be broken, and it will not end."
The gold threads stirred.
"Will you take it?"
Naomi didn't answer right away.
She looked at me with the gray-blue eyes all four of us shared, the way she looked at the training yard every morning, at the walls, at the road out of Greymark. Like I was something she had to keep standing.
"Yes," she said.
Just that. One word, short and certain, like every order she'd ever given.
Then, quieter:
"No more 'soon.'"
My throat closed up.
I'd never once asked her what it cost to keep saying it.
The circle flared. The gold rose and sank into her chest, and for a moment the light caught her silver hair and made it look almost gold too.
A third candle lit inside me.
It didn't flicker like Marika's or glow soft like Hana's. It just burned, steady and still, like a lantern somebody had hung by the door and promised to keep lit.
And underneath it, I felt something I'd never been able to see.
She was tired.
Not tonight-tired. Not spar-tired. The kind of tired that settles into your bones when you pick something heavy up at fifteen and never once set it down.
I looked at her. She looked back. She knew exactly what I'd just felt.
"Don't," she said.
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"Good."
Then she reached up and put her hand on my head, the way she used to when I was small. She left it there a little longer than usual.
Then her eyes narrowed. She could feel me now, too.
"You're dizzier."
"Slightly," I said. "A bit more slightly."
"Bed."
"I'm on the bed."
"In it."
That's when the room decided to tilt for real.
It wasn't dramatic. I just leaned, and kept leaning, and then my head was on the pillow and three faces were hovering over me. Hana had her tin of salve in her hand. I had no idea where she'd been keeping it. She was wearing a nightgown.
"Salve doesn't fix mana, Sis."
"It might."
"It doesn't."
"...It's comforting salve," Hana said, and dabbed some on my forehead anyway.
Marika was already at the door. "Water. I'm getting water. Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone."
"I'm lying down."
"You'll find a way."
She was back before I'd finished blinking. Maybe that was the covenant. Maybe that was just Marika.
"Everyone out," Naomi said. "He needs sleep."
Nobody moved.
Naomi looked at Hana, perched on the edge of my bed with her salve. At Marika, sitting cross-legged on the floor with her back against the wardrobe and a cup of water in her hands. Then she sighed, dragged the chair over to the door, and sat in it facing the hallway, like a guard on night watch.
"...Everyone stay, then."
I closed my eyes.
Three candles burned inside my chest. One to my left, soft and warm. One on the floor, restless even sitting still. One by the door, steady as a wall.
For the first time since I was seven years old, I fell asleep without wondering where any of them were.
I woke up to the sound of running.
Not inside the house. Outside. Two sets of feet pounding the packed dirt of the training yard in a long, steady loop.
The chair by the door was empty. So was the floor by the wardrobe. The only signs anyone had been there were a cup of water on my nightstand and the faint smell of salve on my forehead.
I lay still and checked.
I didn't know I was going to do it until I did. It was like reaching for a sword you've worn so long you forget it's on your hip. Three candles, right where I'd left them.
Two were moving in circles down in the yard.
One was standing still at the front gate.
The pitcher was full again, too. Exactly as full as yesterday, as far as I could tell. When I sat up, the room stayed exactly where it was supposed to, which I decided to count as a win.
I pulled on my navy doublet, buckled on Marika's sword, and went down.
The sky over Greymark was still gray and pink at the edges, and the air bit at my ears. Halfway across the yard, Hana jogged past, red-faced and smiling, and waved at me like we hadn't seen each other in a week.
"Good morning! How are you feeling?"
"You already know how I'm feeling."
"I know," she said happily, and kept running.
Marika came around the far corner a moment later, moving like an arrow somebody had fired and then forgotten about. She passed Hana. Then she lapped Hana. Then she lapped Hana again.
"Don't look at me!" she shouted as she flew by.
"How many is that?"
"Forty-one! Don't count!"
"You just told me the number!"
"Don't count more!"
I left them to it and walked to the front gate.
Naomi stood beside it in full plate and her long navy cape, as if she'd slept eight hours instead of none. A rider in Valcrest navy and silver waited on a gray horse. In Naomi's hand was a letter sealed with our crest: a sword crossing a castle wall.
I knew that seal. I'd watched her press it last night, at Father's desk.
The rider saw me and dipped her head. "Young Master."
She was looking at me the way the whole household had been looking at me since yesterday. The look of people who'd been told "Later" and were very much waiting for later.
Naomi didn't turn around. She didn't need to.
"Two hundred fifty swings today," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You collapsed."
"I lay down. Very quickly. That's different."
She went quiet, and I knew exactly what she was doing. The same thing I'd done the moment I opened my eyes.
Then her shoulders eased. Just slightly.
"...Five hundred," she said.
I tried very hard not to grin. I failed.
My whole life, every argument about whether I was okay had ended the same way: with my sisters deciding I wasn't. Now they didn't have to decide. They could just check.
That was going to work in my favor. Mostly. I made a mental note never to lie about a bruise again, since apparently that wasn't an option anymore.
Naomi held out the letter. The rider tucked it inside her coat.
"Sanctara," Naomi said. "Don't stop longer than you have to."
"Yes, my lady."
The rider turned her horse and kicked it into a canter, and the gate swung shut behind her. We watched her go until the road bent and the trees swallowed her up.
"Time," Naomi said quietly. "Not forever."
"I know."
Somewhere at the end of that road was a Queen who was about to learn my name.
I just hoped she'd stop reading after the second skill.