The bell didn't stop.
It rang while Naomi gave orders, and Naomi gave a lot of orders.
"Everyone who can't fight goes up the hill to the house." She was already striding down the corridor, buckling on her gauntlets as she went. "Agnes opens every room. Two guards hold the door. Nobody goes in or out until I say."
"Yes, my lady," said Sigrid, behind her.
"Everyone who can fight comes to the town gate. Pitchforks, spears, axes, anything. The townswomen take the wall. The knights take the field."
"Yes, my lady."
"Hana. Menders and salve, just inside the gate. Everything you boiled this morning."
"Yes, Big Sis."
"Marika. Get the wall moving. Then the left flank."
Marika was already gone. The door at the end of the corridor was still swinging.
Then Naomi stopped, turned, and looked at me.
I knew what was coming. I'd known since the first ring.
"Fabian," she said. "Behind the wall."
By the time we reached the town gate, Greymark had split in two.
Half of it was going up the hill: old women on canes, mothers with babies on their hips, children clutching chickens they had flatly refused to leave behind. Agnes stood at the top of the road, waving them into the house like a general.
The other half was coming down.
The baker's wife had a pitchfork. The women from the well had an axe and a woodcutter's maul between them. The girl who usually hauled water was hauling two barrels of lamp oil instead, one under each arm, and didn't seem to have noticed they were heavy. They climbed the wall stairs in a long, grim line and spread out along the top between the braziers.
Outside the gate, the knights were forming up on the field. Twenty crimson capes. Sigrid and three of our guards in navy. And at the very front, side by side, a golden braid and a short crop of silver.
Past them, the fields ran flat and dim toward the Gloamwood. The sun was gone. Something black was moving along the tree line, thick and slow, like spilled ink deciding where to go.
Ten years ago, I'd stood at a gate while this bell rang.
My sisters held me there. Naomi had one hand on my shoulder, so tight it hurt. Mother and Father rode out under the bell, and we waited, and waited, and they didn't come back.
The night of my blessing, when I first understood what 「Covenant」 was, the first thing I'd thought was: I'll never have to wait at the gate again.
And here I was. At the gate.
Naomi came back through it, straight to me.
"Here." She pointed at the cobbles just inside, where Hana's menders were setting up tables and lanterns and stacks of clean linen. "This is where you are. You heal what Hana sends you. You do not go past this gate."
"Big Sis, I can help out there. I can see who's—"
"No."
"You'll need—"
"No."
I looked at her. She looked back. Behind her, through the open gate, the black at the tree line was getting bigger.
I could argue. I could argue for an hour. I'd won arguments with Naomi before, sort of, mostly by threatening things. But every minute I spent arguing was a minute she wasn't out there, and the bell was still ringing.
So I swallowed it.
"Fine," I said. "Behind the wall."
Marika, jogging past on her way down from the wall, stopped dead. "That's the hunger strike face."
"It is," said Hana sadly.
"It's not a face. It's just my face."
Naomi bent down until we were eye to eye. She doesn't do that often. She doesn't need to. Usually she just waits until I look up.
"I know that face," she said quietly. "I've known it since you were seven and didn't eat until lunch."
"I ate at lunch."
"Fabian." Her gray-blue eyes didn't blink. "One more time. Stay behind this wall."
I didn't say anything.
That was an answer too, and we both knew it.
"If I find you past this gate," Naomi said, "you'll be swinging until you're forty."
"Fifty," said Marika.
"Fifty."
Then Naomi straightened and put her hand on my head. Just for a second. The way she used to when I was small enough that her hand covered most of it.
Then she turned and walked out through the gate.
Marika lingered for half a step. She reached out, yanked my collar straight, and glared at it.
"If you die," she said, "I'm haunting you."
"You'd haunt me anyway."
"...Exactly." And she was gone, a pink blur headed for the left flank.
The princess was the last to leave. At the gate, she stopped.
"The Queen's law says two," she said, to nobody in particular. Her eyes went to Hana. Then they went to her own escort, lined up behind her. "Beth."
The smallest crimson knight jerked upright. "Your Highness!"
"You'll guard Lord Fabian tonight. Don't leave his side."
"Yes, Your Highness!" It came out so fast and so delighted that two of the other knights turned to stare at her.
The princess looked at her for one long moment.
"Try to keep up, Beth," she said, and followed my sister out into the dark.
The healing post was four trestle tables, a row of lanterns, a mountain of Hana's linen, and six old women from the lower town who'd been binding wounds since before Naomi was born.
Hana moved down the tables checking everything twice. Beth planted herself at my shoulder, spear upright, bouncing on her toes.
"Do you do this a lot?" she asked.
"Stand at a gate?"
"Get left behind."
I didn't answer. She seemed to take that as a yes.
I checked the pitcher in my chest. Eleven, give or take. I tried to plan it the way Naomi would. Green 「Heal」 for anyone who'd die without it. 「Cure」 for venom. Nothing for scratches. Nothing for—
"Young Master."
I looked up.
Dame Hildegard was coming down the street toward the gate.
She wore armor I'd only ever seen hanging on a stand in her front room: old steel, dented, a little loose at the shoulders now. A sword at her hip. And under her arm, the stick she used to get up her own front steps.
Every step on her left leg was a small, stubborn fight.
"Dame Hildegard," I said. "You should be up at the house."
"I should be a lot of things." She stopped at the edge of the lantern light and looked past me, out through the gate. "Last time that bell rang, I stood out there beside your mother. A bear took this knee before morning. I've been sitting down ever since."
She looked back at me.
"I'm not sitting down tonight."
"Your knee—"
"Will hold, or it won't. Either way, I'll be standing in the line when it decides."
She meant it. It was in every line of her face. She'd walk out there on that knee and stand in the line until something knocked her down. And with that knee, it wouldn't take long.
Come find me when you're stronger, Young Master.
I was stronger.
And Naomi wasn't here.
Nobody was here to say not yet.
I looked around. Beth, right at my shoulder. Hana's six menders. Half the wall above us, if anyone glanced down. Every one of them would see it: a circle that wasn't White, in the middle of the town gate, in front of a princess's knight.
Then I looked out through the gate at the line. At twenty knights and four guards and two of my sisters, facing a forest full of things that wanted to eat them.
One more veteran on that line was worth more than any secret I had.
I looked at Hana.
Hana looked at the knee. Then at me. Then, briefly, at Beth.
"Big Sis will be cross," she whispered.
"Big Sis is always cross."
Hana bit her lip. "...Do it."
I knelt in front of Dame Hildegard and put both hands on her knee.
Under 「Eyes of Elysia」, her light was mostly white, except around that knee: an old, dull yellow, settled in so deep it looked like it had been there for ten years. Because it had.
I reached for 「Heal」.
This time, I didn't splash. I poured.
Green spread across the cobbles, bright as new leaves, its lines running out under the trestle tables and around the menders' feet.
Somebody on the wall gasped. One of the menders dropped a roll of linen.
Behind me, Beth breathed one word, very softly, like she was checking it off a list.
"Green."
I didn't have time to wonder about that.
The light rose. Under my hands, I felt the knee shift, and settle, and straighten. The old yellow in her light thinned, and paled, and washed away to white.
Dame Hildegard stood very still.
Then she put her weight on her left leg. All of it.
Then she bent it. Then she bounced on it, once, like a girl trying on new boots.
Her stick clattered to the cobbles. She didn't pick it up.
"Erika's boy," she said, and her voice wasn't quite steady. "Look at you."
"You were supposed to wait for me to come find you."
"I'm old. I don't wait." She drew her sword and looked down at the green fading under her boots. "Green, Young Master. I won't tell a soul." One corner of her mouth twitched. "I'll be much too busy."
Then she turned and walked out through the gate. Not limped. Walked.
Out on the field, I saw Naomi's head turn.
She watched an old knight she'd known her whole life stride across the grass on two good legs and take a place in the line beside her.
In my chest, Naomi's lantern flared so hard I felt it in my teeth.
Then, very slowly, she turned around and looked back at the gate.
At me.
I gave her a small, guilty wave.
She turned back to the forest.
"She knows," said Hana.
"She knows," I agreed.
Nine left.
The first wave hit just after full dark.
From the gate, I could see the torches along the line, the braziers on the wall, and beyond them, the fields. Crawling.
Wolves came first, gray-black and fast, their pale eyes catching the torchlight like old coins. Behind them came Bristleboars with their heads down. Above them, wide wings cut across the stars: Razorwings.
And under everything, around everything, between everything: spiders.
Hundreds. Thousands. A black tide inside the tide, pouring across the grass.
"Spiders!" Naomi's voice carried all the way back to the gate. "Seven in ten! Watch your feet!"
"They're laying silk!" That was the princess, sharp and clear. "Watch the silk!"
I climbed onto the edge of a cart to see.
She was right. Every spider that ran left a thread behind it, gray and glinting in the torchlight. Hundreds of threads. Thousands. Strung low across the fields from the tree line toward our wall, crossing and recrossing until the grass looked like a loom.
Why would they—
Then the line met the tide, and I stopped thinking about anything at all.
Clang!
Wolves hit shields. Boars hit knights, and the knights didn't move. One of the escort caught a Bristleboar by both tusks and simply stopped it, her boots digging two long furrows in the grass. On the left, a pink blur went through a pack of wolves like they were standing still. In the center, Naomi's sword rose and fell, rose and fell, steady as a mill wheel.
A Razorwing came screaming over the wall. The baker's wife put a pitchfork through it before it got halfway down.
"Elysia preserve us," she said, shaking it off the tines. "They're ugly."
Then the first wounded came through the gate.
An escort knight, carried between two others, with a wolf bite through her forearm. A townswoman from the wall, sliced across the shoulder by a Razorwing's feathers. One of our guards with a spider bite and a leg gone numb.
"Salve," Hana said, before I could even lift a hand. "Salve for these. Save yours."
"But—"
"Save yours, Fabian."
So I did what she said. I stood beside her tables and looked at lights.
Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. The menders and the salve and Hana's quick, gentle hands could handle yellow, and they did. Hana went from table to table with her sleeves rolled up and her ribbon coming loose, salving, binding, lifting two grown knights at once onto clean linen like they were pillows.
More wounded came. Then more. Soon the tables were full, and the menders were working on the cobbles, and Hana was everywhere at once without a single second to look up.
And out on the field, in the dark, the lights were changing.
I hadn't known I could see them from that far. Under 「Eyes of Elysia」, the battle line was a long row of frost-edged shapes against the black, and most of them were going yellow. Tired yellow. Bitten yellow.
Then one of them, near the center, went orange.
Then red.
I'd never seen red before. Not once, in more than four hundred people.
It looked like a coal.
And I knew where that light was standing, a few places from Naomi in the center of the line, because I'd checked that guard twice yesterday.
The youngest guard.
I looked at Hana. She was kneeling on the cobbles with both hands pressed to an escort knight's bleeding thigh, talking to her softly, not looking up.
I looked at the gate.
Nobody was standing in it.
"Beth," I said.
"Saint?"
"I'm going out there."
Beth looked at the gate. Then at me. Then, behind her visor, she grinned. I couldn't see it, but I could hear it.
"Her Highness said not to leave your side," she said. "She didn't say which side of the gate."
I went.
The moment I stepped past the gate, three candles jumped in my chest at once.
Behind me, Hana's flared, bright and frightened. I looked back. She'd lifted her head. Across the post and the lanterns and the wounded, our eyes met.
She couldn't leave. She had a knight's life under her hands, and Hana would never, ever let go of that. Not even for me.
She didn't call out. She just moved her lips.
Come back.
Out on the field, Marika's candle flared, hot and furious. Naomi's lantern swung toward me like someone had grabbed it.
They knew exactly where I was. Every step.
And neither of them could leave the line to stop me. If Naomi stepped back, the center broke. If Marika left the flank, the wolves would pour around it.
All they could do was feel me coming, and hope.
The Queen's law says two, I thought, as Beth fell in at my shoulder with her spear. I have one.
I decided the Queen would understand. Under the circumstances.
The field was worse up close.
It smelled of crushed grass and blood and something sour that had to be the spiders. Silk caught at my boots with every step, sticky and stubborn. Beth's spear flicked out, and out, and out, and anything that came too close simply stopped coming.
A Razorwing dropped out of the dark straight at my face.
Beth's spear met it in midair. She flicked it off the point like a beetle off a sleeve and didn't even break stride.
"Thanks," I said faintly.
"That's the job!"
I found the red light.
The youngest guard lay just behind the line, where someone had dragged her. A Bristleboar's tusk had torn through her thigh. Someone had tied a belt above it. It wasn't enough. Her face was gray, and her light was the color of a coal.
She saw me and tried to sit up. "Young Master? You're not supposed to—"
"Lie down."
"It's a scratch—"
"It is not a scratch."
I put my hands on the wound and poured.
Green. The circle spread out under us, wide and bright, lighting up the trampled grass. The light sank into her, and the wound closed from the inside out, and the red in her light cooled to orange, then yellow, then white.
She stared at her leg. Then at me.
Then, very quietly, she hummed her three notes. All three of them.
Seven left.
"Back in the line," I said. "If you can."
"I can." She grabbed her sword. "Thank you, Young Master. It was—"
"Don't say scratch."
"—not a scratch," she agreed, and ran.
A little way off, a knot of crimson knights had pulled back for a breath. Five of them, leaning on their swords. Every one of them was yellow: spider bites, wolf scratches, a dozen small wounds each. None of them bad enough to stop a knight. All of them adding up.
Light wounds. Lots of them. On lots of people.
That was exactly what one skill was made for.
"Close in!" I called. "All of you! Close together!"
They stared at me. Five knights of the royal escort, staring at a short boy in a navy doublet in the middle of a battlefield.
"You heard the Saint!" Beth bellowed. "Close in!"
They closed in.
I reached for 「Mass Heal」 and poured.
The circle opened under all of them at once, green as spring. The light rose and washed over the whole knot of knights, and every small wound closed together.
"By the Goddess," one of them said. "That's green—"
"Yes," I said. "Go."
They went.
Five left.
Two of our guards came stumbling back from the line, numb-handed and slow, their lights sour with spider venom. White 「Cure」. Splash. White 「Cure」. Splash. Their lights cleared, and they went back too.
Three.
Then I looked for my sister.
Naomi was exactly where she'd been since the first wave: in the center of the line, where it bent but didn't break. She'd been fighting for hours. Her sword still rose and fell, steady as ever.
But her light.
The thread of yellow I'd seen every morning since I got these eyes, the ten years she wouldn't admit to, had thickened. It had spread. Now it covered her whole outline, deep and heavy and darkening as I watched, edging toward orange.
She wasn't wounded. She was tired. So tired that one of these swings was going to come too slow.
Tides don't stop when knights get tired.
I went to her.
Beth cleared the way. A wolf went down. A boar went sideways. Silk tore around my boots. And then I was right behind my sister in the line, close enough to touch her cape.
Naomi felt me coming. Of course she did. She cut down the wolf in front of her and turned her head.
"FABIAN."
"One new skill a day," I said, out of breath. "I haven't used today's."
And before she could say a single word, I reached for 「Vigor」.
I'd never cast it. Not once. Naomi had said not yet in the yard, and no on the forest path, and one new skill a day after that. I'd been carrying it around in my head for over a week, like a letter I wasn't allowed to open.
I poured.
The circle opened under Naomi's boots, green, and the light rose up her like warm water.
I watched her light change.
The heavy yellow drained out of it. All of it. Then the old thread underneath, the one that had been there every single morning, thinned, and thinned, until it was almost nothing.
For the first time since I'd been given these eyes, my sister's light was nearly white.
Naomi's shoulders came up. Her breath went out, long and slow. She looked down at her own hands, like she'd forgotten what they felt like when they weren't tired.
Then she looked at me.
"...Go back," she said.
"No."
A wolf lunged. She cut it down without looking.
"Fabian—"
"No."
For one heartbeat, my sister looked at me the way she looked at the map in the war room. Like a problem with no good answers.
"Then stay behind me," she said, and turned back to the forest.
One left.
The princess was fighting at Naomi's side. Her golden braid had come half loose, and her light was yellow all over. Not as deep as Naomi's had been. Getting there.
"Your Highness!"
She glanced back. Saw me. Her eyes went wide, just for a second.
I poured before she could argue too.
Green opened under her boots. The tiredness drained out of her light. She looked down at the circle, and then at me, and her face did absolutely nothing at all.
Then she turned back to the line and fought twice as fast.
The pitcher tipped, and went dry, and kept going.
The ground tilted under me. Just a little. Like the whole field had leaned to one side to look at something.
Minus one.
Mana fatigue. I knew it well. I'd met it every afternoon for weeks at the end of healing hour. Mild. Dizzy. Annoying.
I could work with dizzy.
Beth was still at my side, still fighting, and her light had gone yellow too. She'd been killing things around me for an hour without a single break.
"Beth."
"Little busy, Saint!"
I poured anyway.
Green opened under her boots. She actually yelped. "Whoa!" She bounced on her toes. "I feel like I just woke up! Do that again!"
"Absolutely not."
Minus three.
This time, the dizziness brought a friend: a headache, starting behind my eyes and spreading out like cracks in ice.
Far off on the left flank, Marika's candle blazed.
"FABIAN!" Her voice cut across the whole field, furious and frightened. "I CAN FEEL THAT!"
What you suffer, I will feel.
I'd made that promise to them by candlelight. I'd never really thought about what it would mean on a night like this. Every bit of this headache was landing in three other chests.
Out on the flank, I could see Marika's light. A cut across her arm showed yellow. As I watched, it faded, a little at a time, closing all on its own. Regeneration. Small. Working.
At least something was.
The waves kept coming. Wolves. Boars. Spiders, and more spiders, and more spiders, each one trailing its thread of silk across the fields toward us.
I still didn't understand why.
Then the forest screamed.
It wasn't a howl. It wasn't anything a wolf could make.
It was high and thin and enormous, like a nail dragged across the whole sky. Every monster on the field stopped for one heartbeat. So did every knight.
Then something came out of the Gloamwood.
At first I thought it was part of the forest. A piece of the dark had come loose and started walking.
Then the torchlight caught it.
A spider. The same black, glossy, too-many-legged shape as the little ones, but as big as a hay wagon, with legs longer than lances and a cluster of eyes at the front that caught the firelight like a crown of wet glass.
The Broodmother.
And she was fast.
She shouldn't have been. Naomi had said it in the war room: away from the trees, without her webs, a Gloamweaver could barely move. That was the one thing we had. The open fields.
But the fields weren't open anymore.
She was running on the silk.
Thousands of threads, strung low across the grass by thousands of little spiders, all night long. Every one of them leading from the forest straight to our line. She skated across them like they were roads, her huge legs touching thread after thread after thread, and never the ground at all.
"The silk!" The princess's voice cracked across the field. "They built her a road!"
Naomi didn't answer. She just set her feet.
The Broodmother hit the line.
Knights flew. I'd never seen a knight thrown before. An escort knight went down under one of those huge legs, and the fangs came down after her, and when she rolled clear, her light was already orange.
Then red. In a single breath. Faster than anything I'd ever seen.
I ran to her. Beth ran with me, spear swinging, and three spiders that got too close stopped existing.
The knight was shaking. Her shoulder was black around the bite, and the black was spreading.
「Cure」. White. Splash. It was the cheapest thing I had.
The red faded. Paled. Went orange, then yellow—
—then came back. Red, like it had never left. Like White had only scratched the surface.
At White tier, it only clears mild sickness. Serious sickness comes back.
This wasn't mild.
So I poured.
Green 「Cure」. The circle opened under her, and the light went down into the bite and chased the black out of it, all of it, until her light was white.
Minus six.
My head split open.
Not really. It just felt like it. The headache turned into a hammer, and the hammer started swinging in time with my heartbeat.
"Saint?" Beth was holding my arm. When had she grabbed my arm? "Saint, you're—"
"I'm fine."
Sigrid went down next. The Broodmother spat, like a cat, a spray of something dark and glistening across three knights at once, and Sigrid took most of it across her arm and neck. Her light went orange before she even hit the ground.
I got there. Green. Pour.
Minus eight.
Something warm ran over my lip.
I touched it. My fingers came away dark in the torchlight.
"Fabian." Beth's voice had gone very small. "Your nose. You're bleeding."
"I noticed."
Sigrid sat up, white again, and looked at my face.
"Young Master," she said. Not politely this time. Not politely at all.
In my chest, all three candles were roaring. Hana's from the gate, frantic. Marika's from the flank, wild. Naomi's lantern, swinging so hard I thought it would break loose.
They could feel it. All of it.
What you suffer, I will feel.
"FABIAN!" Naomi's voice came across the line like a thunderclap. The Broodmother had turned. Her crown of eyes swung toward our little knot of people, toward the green light that kept blooming in the dark, and she started to come. "RUN!"
If I say run, you run.
I'd promised.
So I ran.
Just not the way she meant.
Because ten paces away, the princess was down on one knee.
She'd thrown herself between the Broodmother and Naomi's open side, and the fangs had found the gap at her shoulder where the half-plate didn't reach. Her sword was still up. Her light was already red. Darker than the knight's had been. Darker than Sigrid's.
The color of a coal about to go out.
Beth saw it too. She made a sound I'd never heard from anyone, a sound with no words in it at all.
Then she was past me.
She planted herself between the princess and the Broodmother with her spear braced against the ground, and when one of those lance-long legs came stabbing down, Beth caught it on her spear and held it. Her boots sank into the dirt. Her arms shook. She didn't move.
I dropped to my knees beside the princess.
Her eyes were open. Barely. She looked at me like she couldn't work out what I was doing there.
I put my hands on her shoulder and poured.
There was nothing left to pour. I poured anyway.
Green. Not one splash left in the pitcher, and still the circle came, wide and green under both of us. I felt it come from somewhere deeper than the pitcher. Somewhere that hurt.
The black in her shoulder fought back. Then it lost. The red in her light cooled, and cooled, all the way down to white.
Minus ten.
The princess breathed in. Deep.
Then she looked up at me.
I don't know what she saw. A short boy on his knees in the mud. A green circle. Blood running from his nose, over his lip and down his chin, dripping onto her breastplate.
Her face didn't change.
But she looked at me for a very long time.
Then she picked up her sword, stood, and went back to the line.
"BURN THE SILK!"
Naomi's voice. Not a shout. A command, the kind that moves armies. "Marika! The wall! Burn all of it!"
Marika was already running.
I'd seen my sister run before. I had never seen her run like that. She crossed the field faster than the Razorwings could fly, and her voice went up the wall stairs ahead of her: "OIL! TORCHES! NOW!"
The women of Greymark didn't need telling twice.
Barrels of lamp oil went over the wall. The water girl threw one out onto the field like it weighed nothing, and it burst across the silk. Then the torches came down, dozens of them, spinning end over end.
The silk caught.
Fire ran along the threads like a living thing. Out from the wall, across the fields, along every gray line the spiders had laid all night, branching and racing, until the whole field was crossed with lines of flame, and every single one of them led straight back to her.
The Broodmother screamed.
Her roads burned out from under her. Thread after thread snapped and fell, and she came down onto the bare, scorched earth with a crash I felt through my knees.
And she couldn't move.
She tried. Her legs thrashed and scraped at the dirt, slow and clumsy, like something that had never had to walk on the ground in its life.
Dame Hildegard reached her first. An old knight on two good legs, sword up. The first leg went.
Then a pink blur, back from the wall, twin swords flashing. Another leg. Another.
Then Naomi walked out of the line.
She didn't run. She didn't need to. She walked straight toward that crown of eyes, and the princess walked beside her.
"The big one," said Naomi, "is mine."
"Ours," said the princess.
Naomi didn't argue.
They struck together. Two swords, one plain steel, one with a gold-wrapped grip, came down into the crown of eyes at the same moment, and Naomi's went in all the way to the hilt.
The Broodmother shuddered once, from end to end.
Then she was still.
For a second, the whole field held its breath.
Then the spiders broke.
All of them, at once, the way they'd moved all night: together. They scattered across the burning field toward the trees. The wolves followed them. The boars followed the wolves. The Razorwings wheeled up into the dark and away.
The tide went out.
And behind the Gloamwood, the sky was starting to turn gray.
I was sitting down.
I didn't remember sitting down. The ground had just gotten closer at some point, and now I was on it, in the mud and the ash and the broken silk, with my head pounding like a drum and the taste of iron in my mouth.
Beth crouched in front of me. Her helmet was dented. Her spear was cracked down the middle. She was breathing so hard her whole tabard moved.
"You," she said. "You. You're completely mad."
"I've been told."
"You went out past the gate. With one guard. You cast until your nose bled, and then you cast more, and you—" She stopped. Her voice wobbled. "You saved her. You saved Cor— Her Highness."
"I saved a lot of people."
"I know! I watched!" She grabbed both my hands in her gauntlets and squeezed. "I've met three men in my whole life, Saint, and not one of them would've crossed a room for somebody else. You crossed a battlefield. Bleeding."
I would have laughed, but my head wouldn't let me.
A shadow fell over us.
The princess stood there. Her cape was torn, her braid was ruined, and her shoulder was whole under the gap in her half-plate. Under 「Eyes of Elysia」, her light was white. Clean, bright white.
She looked down at me for a long moment.
"You were ordered to stay behind the wall," she said.
"Yes, Your Highness."
"By your Countess."
"Yes, Your Highness."
She was quiet.
"Remind me," she said at last, "never to give you an order."
Then she turned and walked back toward her knights, and didn't look back.
I had no idea what that meant.
I decided to count it as a win.
Then the candles reached me.
Marika first. Of course Marika first. She came across the field so fast I never saw her run, only stop, skidding down onto her knees in front of me.
"You idiot," she said. Her voice cracked right down the middle. "You absolute, complete, idiot—"
Then Naomi, her sword still in her hand. Walking fast. Then not walking.
Then Hana, all the way from the gate, her sleeves red with other people's blood and her salve tin already open, her face soaked.
"I'm fine," I told them.
I meant it. I really did.
Then I tasted iron again, a lot more of it, and the world tipped sideways, and I was sick all over Naomi's boots.
It wasn't just sick. It was red. So much red.
"Fabian."
That was Naomi. On her knees. Catching me.
I'd never heard her sound like that. Not when she told me about the stables. Not when she bowed her head to Odile and said please.
"Fabian. Look at me. Look at me."
I tried.
Three candles burned in my chest, so bright they hurt. Hana's, warm and frightened. Marika's, wild. Naomi's, a lantern by the door, swinging.
All three of them leaning toward me. All three of them holding on.
Somewhere above us, the sky over the Gloamwood was turning gold.
Elysia had lent me her eyes.
For a while, I closed mine.
End of Volume 1
Afterword
Thank you so much for reading Volume 1 of Fabian and His Three Sisters: The Hidden Saint of House Valcrest.
This story started with one simple picture: a short, stubborn boy who wanted fire or lightning so he could fight beside his sisters, and who was given the power to heal them instead. Somewhere along the way, Naomi started handing out laps, Marika walked into a linen closet, Hana began counting his sneezes, and a princess borrowed a guard's armor and picked the worst fake name she could have. I hope you enjoyed spending time with them as much as I did.
Volume 1 ends with Fabian on the ground, a field full of people who saw far too much, and a "delayed truth" that has just run out of time. The Crown, a fourth place in a covenant, and one very suspicious helmet are all waiting in Volume 2.
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 Greymark. I'll see you in Volume 2.
Bonus: The Valcrest Siblings Say Thank You
Hana: "Thank you all so much for reading! I counted every single one of you in my notebook."
Marika: "...How? You don't even know how many there are."
Hana: "I started a new notebook."
Marika: "Fine. Whatever. It's not like we're grateful or anything." (Her ears are pink.) "...Thanks. Don't make it weird."
Naomi: "Read Volume 2."
Hana: "Big Sis, you're supposed to ask nicely."
Naomi: "..."
Naomi: "Please."
Fabian: "Can I say thank you too, or am I still unconscious?"
All three: "Unconscious."