The first thing I did was look down the hall.
Left. Right. Left again.
Empty. The candles in their brackets had burned low, and somewhere downstairs a clock was ticking itself to sleep.
I knew exactly where all three of my sisters were. Hana's candle was in her room, soft and still. Asleep. Marika's was down the hall, restless even in sleep, probably kicking her blankets off. Naomi's was in the war room, because of course it was.
None of that told me where Agnes was.
「Covenant」 tells you where your sisters are. It does not tell you where the head maid is, or whether she's about to come around the corner with a lamp and the face she makes when someone is awake past midnight.
Left. Right.
"Lord Fabian," the princess whispered.
"One more."
Left. Right. Left.
"If anyone sees you walk into my room at this hour," I whispered back, "Naomi will have me running laps until I'm forty."
"Then stop looking and let me in. My feet are freezing."
Fair. I stepped aside.
She came in, set her candle on my desk, and sat down on the very corner of the end of my bed, as far from everything as she could get while still technically sitting on furniture. She tucked her bare feet up under the hem of the night robe.
I shut the door very, very quietly and stood with my back against it.
I had a theory.
The theory was: everyone who wanted to be bound to me had to knock at night, in a night robe, holding a candle.
Counterpoint: Naomi had knocked in a shirt and trousers. Marika had knocked in whatever she'd been wearing when she gave up pretending to be asleep.
It was a bad theory. I didn't like how well it fit anyway.
"Lord Fabian."
"Your Highness."
She looked down at her feet. Then up at me.
"You really don't remember me," she said. "Do you?"
"We've seen each other every day for two weeks."
"Before that."
"Before—" I frowned. "Have we met?"
She made a sound into her hands that wasn't quite a laugh and wasn't quite a scream.
"All right," she said, lifting her head. "All right. I'll go slowly."
She held up one finger.
"The morning before the tide. Your practice yard. A guard in light armor with a practice spear. She introduced herself as 'Beth. Just Beth.' She said her mother picked out a very long name, and she picked a short one."
"Beth," I said. "Right. Your friend."
A second finger.
"She knocked you flat on your back. You got up and said 'Again.' She knocked you down again. Then your sister Hana came across that yard faster than any person should be able to run, and Beth noticed."
"...How do you know Beth noticed?"
A third finger, a little harder.
"The night of the tide, the First Princess ordered Beth to guard you. You went out past the gate anyway, so Beth went with you. She said, 'She didn't say which side of the gate.'"
Something in my head went click, very quietly, like a door latch.
"You opened a Green circle in front of the gate, and Beth whispered 'Green.' You gave her 「Vigor」, and it felt like someone had lifted a sack of wet flour off her shoulders. She held one of the Broodmother's legs on her spear so it couldn't reach her sister. Her spear cracked. And afterward, she told you that you were completely mad—"
"—and she almost said Cor," I said.
The princess spread her hands.
I looked at her. Really looked.
The height. The spear she'd left leaning by the yard fence every morning. The wrong-side dismount. The laugh from somewhere with smoke. The honey cakes.
"You're Beth," I said.
"I'm Beth."
"You're Beth."
"Just Beth."
"You ate six honey cakes in a helmet!"
"I was hungry!"
She tried to hold it in. She really did. She pressed both hands over her mouth, and her shoulders shook, and then it came out anyway. The same laugh. The one from the smoke. Quiet, because of the hour, but completely helpless.
"I have never," she gasped, "in my whole life, met anyone this blunt."
"Blunt?"
"Blunt! Dull! Like a practice spear!" She wiped her eyes. "I fought you in Beth's style. I said 'Almost is how it starts.' I said 'which side of the gate' at the gate. The baker called me Helmet Girl to my face!"
"I thought it was a capital thing!"
"What capital thing?"
"Eating in helmets! Knowing where all the bakeries are!"
She fell over sideways onto my bed and laughed into my blanket until I was genuinely afraid someone would hear.
"Shh. Shh. Agnes."
"Sorry. Sorry." She sat up, red in the face. "Two weeks, Saint. Two weeks."
I didn't have a defense.
I decided not to count this one as a win.
Slowly, the laughter went out of her face.
She folded her hands in her lap. For the first time since she'd knocked, she looked like a princess. Not the stiff, careful one from the gate. The other kind. The kind who'd grown up in the same house as Cordelia.
"There's another reason I came," she said.
"I figured. You didn't knock at midnight to talk about honey cakes."
"The night before the tide," she said quietly, "I stood outside your reading room door."
The room went very cold.
"Covenant," she said.
I didn't move.
"Four."
My heart started to pound.
"Regeneration."
My hands had gone numb.
"Not the princess."
And then the room wasn't cold anymore. It was hot, and my heart was going like a hammer, the way it had on the field, and I was thinking about the reading room and treason and titles stripped and they'd just take you, and the Queen's own daughter sitting on the end of my bed—
"Saint."
She'd moved. She was in front of me, gripping both my shoulders.
"Saint. Breathe."
"You—"
"Breathe. Slowly. In." Her grip tightened. "Your sisters. Can they feel this?"
That stopped me cold.
Could they? They felt it when I was hurt. When I wobbled. When I got dizzy. Could they feel a heart going like this?
I didn't know. I did not want to find out with three knights kicking my door down at midnight.
"...Maybe," I said.
"Then breathe. In. Out. Like after a long ride." She breathed with me. In. Out. "There. Again."
My heart slowed. A little. Then a little more.
"Better," she said. She let go of my shoulders and sat back down on the very corner of the bed, as if she'd never moved at all.
"How long," I said, when I could talk again, "have you known?"
"Since the reading room door." She met my eyes. "And I'll tell you who else knows that I know. Your sister. The Marchioness."
"Naomi knows?"
"She cornered me in the stables on the night of the feast. With her hand on her sword."
"The horse," I said faintly. "You were talking about the horse."
"It's a very good horse."
Naomi knew. For two weeks, Naomi had known that the Queen's daughter knew about 「Covenant」, and she'd let me eat breakfast across the table from her every single morning and said nothing.
Then again, Naomi said nothing about most things. That was more or less her whole personality.
"I haven't told anyone," the princess said. "Not my sister. Not my mother. I stood in front of Mother while Cor gave her report, and I didn't say a word. I promised the Marchioness, and now I'm promising you." She held my eyes. "It stays with me. Whatever you say next. That part's already decided."
"Whatever I say next?"
She took a breath.
"I don't know what 「Covenant」 is," she said. "Not really. But I know it's a skill. And I know your sisters feel it when you're hurt. I watched all three of them look up when you bumped your elbow."
She held up four fingers.
"And I know there's a four." She folded three of them down, one at a time. "Three sisters."
One finger left.
"So one place is empty."
I didn't say anything. I couldn't.
"I want it," the princess said. "The last one."
I didn't say anything for a long time.
The candle on my desk burned down a little. Downstairs, the clock kept ticking.
Naomi had wanted one place kept free, the night I bound them. I hadn't let her. I had never once regretted it.
But that had been my family.
This was the Second Princess of Octavia. The Queen's daughter. Someone who'd probably been writing to her mother about me every few days since she got here.
It stays with me. Whatever you say next. That part's already decided.
She'd given me the secret back before she asked for anything. So that whatever I said, it wouldn't be a trade.
I opened my mouth.
"It's not a small thing," I said.
"I didn't think it was."
"Let me tell you what it is. All of it. Then you decide."
She nodded.
So I told her.
That it was a bond. That everyone bound would always know where the others were, at any distance, and how they were: hurt, sick, dizzy, wobbling. That it gave the people bound to me a share of my strength, and more as my magic grew. That since my Green rank, small wounds healed on their own: a cut thumb in a few hours.
"That's the regeneration," I said.
She nodded slowly, like the last piece of a puzzle had just dropped into place.
"Three places at White. Four at Green. Three are my sisters."
"And it's not in the records," she said.
"It's not in Records of the Saints of Elysia. Not once. Not for any Saint, since the kingdom was founded." I took a breath. "And it doesn't end. That's the part you have to hear. You can't take it back. I can't undo it. If you're bound to me, you're bound to me forever. And to them."
I pointed at the wall. Toward three candles.
"You'll feel them. They'll feel you. Always. Your mother could ask you anything she likes, and you'd still feel exactly where we are."
I expected her to hesitate.
She didn't. Her eyes had gone very bright.
"A skill that's in no book," she said softly. "That nobody's ever felt."
"Four people have felt it."
"Then I'll be the fifth." She grinned. "Yes."
"You haven't even heard—"
"Yes, Saint. Ask me properly. I'll say yes properly."
I looked at her for a long moment. At the bare feet tucked under the night robe. At the hands that had held a spider leg the size of a fence post. At the face that had told me I was completely mad, right after I saved her sister.
She meant it. Every bit of it.
I checked the pitcher. Seven splashes, sloshing near the bottom; I hadn't done my count yet tonight. 「Covenant」 would take five.
Enough.
I held out my hand. She took it.
I reached for the skill, and the words were there, the way they'd been the first time. Waiting for me.
The circle opened beneath us. Green, laced through with thin threads of gold, turning slowly on the floorboards and throwing light up the walls.
The princess drew in a breath. "Green," she whispered. Then, softer: "...and gold."
"By the light of Elysia, I offer my covenant," I said. "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."
I swallowed.
"Will you take it?"
"Yes," the princess said. "I'll take it. And you can't have it back."
The gold threads lifted off the circle and sank into her chest.
Five splashes poured out of me at once. The room tipped, just a little, and steadied.
She gasped. Her hand tightened on mine.
"Oh," she said.
I knew that face. Hana had made it. Marika had made it, and then pretended she hadn't. Even Naomi had made it, for one second, before she put it away.
The face of someone being held.
And there, in my chest, beside the other three—
A fourth candle.
Hana's, soft and warm. Marika's, bright and restless. Naomi's, steady as a lantern by a door.
And a new one. It flickered and jumped and danced every which way, like a candle someone had carried outside on a windy night. It should have gone out a dozen times already.
It didn't.
"There are people," the princess said slowly, her free hand pressed flat over her heart, "in my chest."
"Candles," I said.
"Three of them." Her eyes went wide. "Saint. There are three of them. Why are they—"
I felt it at the same moment she did.
Three candles. Moving.
One came down the hall like a thrown torch. Another came right behind it, fast and warm and already worried.
And the third came up from the war room at a steady, unhurried walk.
Two of them were running.
The third one wasn't.
Somehow, that was worse.