Dame Valeria didn't make a speech.
She waited until the Queen was seated. She waited until Cordelia had walked back to her mother's side, and Liesel had remembered how to breathe. Then she looked at the six of us on the sand, three at each end, and spoke in a voice that carried all the way to the top of the wall where the sparrows were sitting.
"Lords to the back. Escorts forward."
I stepped back. Liesel and Wren stepped forward, one on each side of the space in front of me: a practice spear and a wooden sword.
At the other end, Cassian strolled back two lazy paces. Ilse and his second escort came forward. Ilse's wooden sword was steady. The other woman held her long practice spear left-handed, and she was standing, I noticed, with a little more weight on her left leg.
Twenty paces of raked sand between us.
I checked the pitcher. Eighteen.
Then I made myself do the other sum, the one that mattered more. A typical mage holds eight to twelve. Everyone in this yard who knew anything about mages knew that. The girls on the benches knew it. Dame Valeria knew it. On a chair at the rail behind me, the Queen of Octavia certainly knew it.
So in front of all of them, I had twelve. Ten, if I wanted to look ordinary. The other six didn't exist.
Not unless they had to.
"Begin," said Dame Valeria.
Cassian didn't move. Of course he didn't. He let his escorts do it.
Ilse came straight for Liesel, fast and low. The other woman came for Wren. The yard filled with the clack of wood on wood.
Then Cassian lifted one hand, almost bored, and a circle opened in front of him.
Not Blue. Green. Smaller. Faster.
The fire came across the sand like a thrown stone. Liesel turned from Ilse's sword and swung her spear, and the fireball broke on the shaft in a spray of sparks. The wood blackened. Smoke curled up from the head of her spear.
She'd hit it hard. Not oak-hard. Princess-who-had-been-training hard.
Two, I counted. For him.
Ilse didn't give her a breath. She was on Liesel before the sparks had landed, wooden sword cutting in from the left, then the right, then the left again, and every cut was meant. Ilse had said she wouldn't hold back. She hadn't lied.
And Liesel, who could have snapped that sword over her knee, gave ground.
One step. Then another.
I'd seen Liesel hold a Broodmother's leg on a spear. I had never seen her give ground to anyone.
Ilse's sword cracked against her shoulder.
Liesel staggered. Not much. Just enough.
I didn't think. We'd drilled it twelve times in the dusk. A White circle opened under Liesel's boots, warm and quick, and was gone.
One. For me.
The benches murmured. The Saint heals his escort. That was all anyone saw. That was the point.
On the other side of the yard, Wren was doing something I had never seen her do: talking.
Not out loud. With her feet.
She went right. The second escort turned with her, spear sweeping, and favored her left leg on the turn. Wren went right again. The woman turned again, slower. Wren went right a third time, and the spear came round a beat late, exactly the way Liesel's left-handed spear had in practice, and Wren was inside it with her wooden sword at the woman's ribs.
She was going to win.
Cassian saw it too.
The second Green circle opened in front of him almost lazily. The fire went past his own escort's shoulder close enough to singe her hair and hit Wren full in the side.
Wren went down.
She didn't scream. She clamped her teeth shut and rolled in the sand, and under 「Eyes of Elysia」 her light went from white to orange so fast it looked like a door slamming.
Four, I counted. For him.
And he hadn't been angry when he threw it. He'd been aiming.
Angry men miss, Liesel had said. Lord Cassian doesn't practice, Ilse had said. Except every night this week, late, where nobody was watching.
He hadn't been practicing to throw harder. He'd been practicing not to miss.
I poured.
Green opened under Wren, bright as new leaves across the sand. The orange in her light paled, and cooled, and washed back to white. She was up before the circle faded, sword in hand, back in front of the second escort as if she'd never left.
Three. For me.
"Young Master," she said, without turning around. "It was a scratch."
"It was not a scratch."
"...It was not a scratch," Wren agreed, and went right.
Ilse hit Liesel twice more. Once across the arm, once across the back of the thigh. Both times I cast. Both times the benches murmured.
Five.
(Saint.)
Liesel's voice, in my chest. She didn't look round. She was too busy taking another step back.
(Stop casting on me.)
(It's the cover. We agreed—)
(You're at five.) Ilse's sword came in, and Liesel caught it on her blackened spear and slid it off, careful, careful, so careful. (They're counting. All of them. If you hit twelve in front of my mother, it won't matter how hard I hit anything.)
She was right. I hated that she was right.
And she was losing ground. Step by step, back toward me. Holding back was taking everything she had, and Ilse, who had nothing to hide, was simply better at fighting a princess who wasn't allowed to win.
Then Cassian smiled at me across the yard and opened a Blue circle.
Fire mages always go for the healer first.
The Blue fireball came at me, bigger than the Green ones and slower, so bright that the sand beneath it turned the color of honey.
Liesel moved.
She tore herself away from Ilse and threw herself into its path, and this time she couldn't afford to be careful. She swung with both hands.
The fire hit the wood, and the wood didn't stop it. The shaft exploded. Burning splinters flew everywhere, and the fireball broke into a hundred smaller pieces that spattered across the sand and hissed out.
Liesel stood in the smoke with half a spear in her hands and her palms burned raw.
Seven, I counted. For him.
This one wasn't cover. I poured, and Green opened under her boots, and I watched the raw red go out of her hands.
Seven. For me.
It didn't buy her a single breath. Ilse's sword came down across her back while she was still turning, and Liesel went to one knee.
At the same moment, on the far side of the yard, Wren's sword found the second escort's bad knee. The woman went down hard. Her spear jabbed out as she fell and caught Wren in the ribs.
"Ardane's second," said Dame Valeria. "Down. Off the sand."
The woman limped off. Her spear stayed where she'd dropped it.
And both of mine were hurt, twenty paces apart.
「Mass Heal」 needed them inside one circle. They weren't in one circle. They were never going to be in one circle.
Two people. One thing. Both of them, standing.
I reached.
A single White circle opened between my hands, split down the middle like an apple, and slid apart across the sand, one half under Liesel's knee and one under Wren's boots. They turned in step.
The yard went quiet.
Then the murmur came, louder than any before it, rolling up the benches. "Double—" "That's a double cast—" "Two at once—"
The pitcher poured. Four.
Eleven.
Across the yard, Cassian laughed.
"Eleven," he called. He'd been counting too. Of course he had. "That's a whole pitcher, little Saint. You're dry."
I didn't answer.
Let him think so. Let all of them think so.
Seven left, give or take a few drops. Nobody in that yard knew it but me and one princess. And three women nine days away, who could feel it.
Liesel was up. She'd snatched the second escort's spear off the sand, and Ilse was on her again before she'd finished rising.
And Cassian opened another Blue circle.
He didn't look at Liesel. He didn't look at Wren. He looked straight at me, and he took his time, because he thought I had nothing left.
Liesel turned. Ilse caught her spear shaft in both hands and hung on.
Wren ran. She was fast. She was ten paces away.
Ten paces is a lot of room.
The fire hit me.
I'd thought I knew what fire felt like. I'd seen Ilse's arm. I'd healed it.
I hadn't known anything.
It hit me on the left side, shoulder and arm and ribs, and it wasn't heat. It was weight. It was like being punched by the sun. The sound went out of the world. The sky turned over. I was on the sand without any memory of falling, and then I did remember, because some small, stubborn part of me that had spent two days being knocked down by girls tucked my chin and rolled.
Like a cat. Sort of.
Then the pain arrived, all of it at once, and I stopped thinking about cats.
Ten, said the far-off part of me that never stops counting. For him.
And in my chest, every candle I had went up like a bonfire.
(FAB—) Marika.
(Fabian, Fabian, Fabian—) Hana.
Every word tipped another drop out of a pitcher the whole yard thought was empty.
(QUIET,) said Naomi.
Silence. Three candles, nine days away, burning so hard it hurt, and not one more word. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard Naomi do.
Then I felt the fourth candle.
Liesel's has always flickered. Since the night I bound her, it's been a candle carried outside on a windy night: never out, never still.
It went still.
I turned my head on the sand and saw why.
She'd felt it. All of it. Every bit of the fire that had gone into me had gone into her as well, through the bond, the way it was always going to.
And Liesel stopped pretending.
Ilse was still holding her spear shaft with both hands. Liesel simply took it back. One pull, and Ilse came off her feet, went flying three paces across the sand, and landed badly, on her wrist, with a sound I heard from where I lay.
Then Liesel ran.
I'd seen Marika cross a battlefield faster than Razorwings could fly. This was faster. The sand didn't part for her. It just gave up.
Somewhere above me, Dame Valeria's voice: "Lord Fab—"
She was going to call me down.
I was the lord. If I was down, it was over, whatever Liesel did next. Then he should have stayed on his feet.
Seven splashes. One the yard would believe, and six that didn't exist.
I reached into the bottom of the pitcher and poured.
Green opened under me on the sand, wide and bright. The fire went out of my side like water wrung out of a cloth. The weight lifted. The pain thinned, and paled, and was gone.
Thirteen.
I stood up.
"I'm standing, Dame Valeria."
Her hand stopped halfway up. She looked at me. She looked at the green fading under my boots. One corner of her mouth did something very small.
On the benches, somebody said "Thirteen" out loud, in a voice like a dropped plate.
Across the yard, Cassian had seen it too. His face had gone gray. Not from fear, or not only from fear. He'd been pouring all morning, his own pitcher was nearly empty, and he knew it.
He raised his hand anyway. One last Green circle, ragged at the edges, aimed at me.
Twelve, I counted. Every drop he had.
Liesel was already there.
She stepped into the fire's path with the second escort's spear and hit it so hard that the fireball didn't break apart. It simply stopped existing, like Cassian's straw target. The spear went with it, in a burst of burning splinters. She didn't even look at what was left in her hands. She dropped it, stepped in, hooked one boot behind Cassian's ankle, and put him flat on his back in the sand.
Then she knelt beside him with one hand resting on his velvet chest. Not pressing. She didn't need to press.
Her voice was very quiet. I heard it anyway. Everyone did.
"You hit him," said Liesel. "You shouldn't have."
Cassian stared up at her. His face had gone the color of old ash, and sweat stood out along his hairline. His pitcher was empty. He knew it. Every mage in the yard knew it.
He lifted his hand anyway.
The edge of a Green circle began to open at his fingertips, thin and shaking.
Liesel caught his wrist and pressed it back down onto the sand. Gently. Completely. The half-made circle went out like a pinched candle.
"Don't," she said. "You're empty. I watched someone cast past empty once. First it was his head. Then it got worse. Then his nose bled. Then he was sick, and it was red." Her grip didn't move. "You don't want to find out what comes after that."
Cassian looked at her hand around his wrist. Then, for one breath, past her, at me.
His arm went slack.
"Lord Cassian," said Dame Valeria. "Down."
The whole yard held its breath.
"Match," said Dame Valeria, "to Lord Fabian of Greymark."
Nobody cheered. Not at first.
It was too quiet for that. A yard full of girls, staring at the Second Princess kneeling over a lord with her burned hands, and at the healer who had counted to thirteen and stood up.
Somewhere on the benches, in all that silence, a single voice said, "Extraordinarily."
I didn't have to look to know whose it was.
Then the noise came, all at once, like a wave hitting a wall.
I didn't listen to it. I was already walking.
Ilse was sitting in the sand where she'd landed, holding her wrist against her chest the way she'd held her arm on the first day. Her teeth were clamped shut. Under 「Eyes of Elysia」, her wrist was orange.
She looked up at me and didn't move.
"I said I would," I said, and knelt.
Green opened under both of us. Her wrist straightened, and settled, and the orange cooled to white.
Fifteen.
Ilse stared at her hand. Then at me.
"...You said," she whispered.
"I said."
Near the front of the benches, Lady Amara had risen to her feet. For the first time since I'd met her, the smile was gone. She was simply looking at me, as if I were a sum that hadn't come out the way it should.
Cassian was still on his back. Liesel had let go of him. He was gray and sweating and trying to sit up, and he couldn't.
"I can't fix that one," I told him. "Nobody can. Lie still until the sky stops moving."
He looked at me. Something moved behind his eyes, under all the gray.
"Fifteen," he said hoarsely.
He'd counted too.
I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer that was mine to give.
Liesel was standing a little apart, with her hands behind her back.
"Show me."
"No."
"Liesel."
"It'll be gone by supper," she said. "That's the problem, isn't it?"
It was. Everyone had seen her palms after the last fire. Everyone would see them tomorrow, smooth.
"You're at fifteen," she added, very quietly. "Don't you dare."
I didn't. I had three left. I was no longer sure what I was saving them for.
Then the yard went quiet again, the kneeling kind of quiet, and I turned around.
The Queen of Octavia had risen from her chair at the rail.
She didn't come onto the sand. She didn't need to. She looked at Cassian, flat on his back. She looked at Ilse, flexing her healed hand. She looked at me for a long, still moment, the way Naomi looks at a map.
"Fifteen," said the Queen.
That was all. Just the number. She had counted every one.
Then she looked past me, at her daughter.
"Elisabeth."
Liesel's back went very straight. "...Mother."
"The palace. Tonight." A pause. "Bring your hands."
Beside her, Cordelia said nothing at all. She was looking at Liesel's hands, hidden behind Liesel's back, as if she could see straight through her. Maybe she could.
Then the crimson guards closed around them, and they were gone.
I sat down on the sand. My legs had decided it, not me.
Liesel sat down next to me. A moment later, Wren sat down on my other side with her wooden sword across her knees, humming three notes very fast, then slower.
(Fabian.)
Naomi. Steady as a lantern by a door.
(I'm standing, Big Sis.)
(You're sitting.)
(...I stood. Then I sat.)
(I know.) A pause. (I felt you stand.)
Nobody else said anything. Not even Marika. I could feel all three of them, nine days away, holding very still, the way you hold still when you're trying very hard not to shake.
(The invitation came this morning,) said Naomi. (Marika is saddling her horse.)
(I'M SADDLING IT FAST,) said Marika.
A pause.
(...So am I,) said Naomi.
Fifteen splashes, spent in front of the Queen. A princess who had stopped pretending, in front of the one sister who knew exactly how hard she used to hit. Three sisters on the road to Sanctara.
I lay back on the warm sand, looked up at the sky over the Royal Academy, and for once, I didn't count anything at all.
End of Volume 2
Afterword
Thank you so much for reading Volume 2 of Fabian and His Three Sisters: The Hidden Saint of House Valcrest.
Volume 1 was about a boy who wanted to fight beside his sisters and was given the power to heal them instead. Volume 2 was about leaving: riding out of the gate under a silent bell, and finding out that three sisters can follow you anyway, one voice in your chest at a time. Along the way, a princess took off her helmet and asked for the fourth candle, Wren learned to walk beside instead of ten paces back, a very expensive soup was eaten, a debt was paid with one egg, and Fabian finally met someone who uses even fewer words than Naomi. I hope you enjoyed the road to Sanctara as much as I did.
Volume 2 ends with a battle yard full of people who just watched a healer count far past twelve, a princess who stopped pretending in front of the one sister who knew exactly how hard she used to hit, and a Queen who counted every splash. Three sisters are saddling their horses. A class mistress has stopped smiling. And somewhere, a headmistress is still "detained." All of it is waiting in Volume 3.
If you enjoyed this volume, I'd be truly grateful for your support. A comment, a rating, a follow, or a recommendation to a friend helps the story find more readers, and it tells me you want to know what happens next. I read every comment, even when I can't reply to them all.
Thank you for coming to Sanctara. I'll see you in Volume 3.
Bonus: The Valcrest Siblings (and One Princess) Say Thank You
Hana: "Thank you all so much for reading! I filled the new notebook, so I started a third one."
Marika: "You can't count people you can't even see."
Hana: "I count the ones who came back."
Marika: "...Fine. It's not like we noticed you came back or anything." (Her ears are pink.) "...We noticed. Don't make it weird."
Liesel: "Report from the afterword. Everyone read Volume 2. Very hard. Recently."
Naomi: "Read Volume 3."
Hana: "Big Sis."
Naomi: "...Please."
Hana: "That was much faster than last time!"
Naomi: "Noted."
Fabian: "Can I say thank you this time? I'm conscious."
Naomi: "Then be quick."
Fabian: "Thank you all for read—"
All four: "Too slow."
Wren: (hums four notes)