Fabian and His Three Sisters

In the Kingdom of Octavia, boys are rare and treasured. Women carry the swords; men stay safe at home.

Fabian Valcrest has other plans. For seven years he's sparred with his eldest sister Naomi, the knight who held the family together after their parents fell to a monster tide. She has never needed both hands to beat him. Marika and Hana are quietly hoping the gods give him something harmless.

Instead, a goddess who almost never answers grants him healing, the gift of a Saint, and a hidden third skill: 「Covenant」, a bond that makes those he trusts permanently stronger.

Reveal it, and he becomes a weapon every noble house will want. Hide it, and House Valcrest commits treason.

Then a princess arrives to see the Saint of Greymark, and the dark forest on the border falls silent.

Fabian once swore he'd never wait at the gate again. This time, he won't.

Fabian Valcrest saved Greymark from the monster tide, then slept for twenty-one days paying for it. He wakes to new titles for his sisters, an "invitation" from the Queen to the Royal Academy, and a princess who keeps dropping hints he somehow misses.

Second Princess Liesel knows the secret that could cost House Valcrest everything. She doesn't want to expose it. She wants in.

So Fabian rides for Sanctara with a princess and a guard who hums instead of talking, while his three sisters stay behind, closer than ever, thanks to a voice he never knew he had. But the capital has rules for Saints, a Queen who counts everything, and a fire mage next door who doesn't like being ignored.

A Saint who stops at ten to look ordinary. A princess pretending she isn't strong. And a battle yard where everyone is counting.

Fifteen splashes. The whole Royal Academy counted, and now every house in Octavia wants the Saint of Greymark.

His three sisters ride into Sanctara to be titled by the Queen, who has one question for Fabian: "What about one of my daughters?" And one order: think about it. So he does. He counts his reasons the way he counts splashes, and every count ends in the same place: a princess with a spear, who keeps blaming her racing heart on the stairs.

But the headmistress has come home with mud on her boots and a warning: the demons are back. In the garden at the heart of the Academy, where everyone walks and nobody looks, something has been planted. Quarrels flare. Girls cry without knowing why. And Fabian, whose pool would run dry by noon in a tide, starts trying to bottle a healing.

Some things grow in the dark. Some things have to be said out loud.

Fabian Valcrest came back from the garden alive, with a pool the Academy must never learn about and a princess who now calls him by his name. The Queen wants the match. Fabian gives the only answer he can: Liesel first. He'll ask her himself, properly, with something he made with his own two hands. That's harder than it sounds when three sisters can feel his heart race from across the kingdom.

Then Felix Aquilan arrives from Bellonia: loud, cheerful, a terrible singer, and the first mage whose spark makes Fabian's healing last. Together they learn to bottle the light. But riders without banners are moving on the forest road, Marika rides for Greymark in a hare mask, and a bottle has to last thirty days.

A volume about asking, and about what we carry for the people we love.