"We have to report you to the Queen."
I blinked. "That's it? That's the part I won't like?"
"I'm not finished."
Of course she wasn't.
Naomi stayed by the cold fireplace, arms folded, the way she stood when she gave orders on the training field. Marika had planted herself by the window, still glaring at the curtains like someone might climb through them. Hana perched on the arm of my chair, close enough that her shoulder brushed mine.
"Every blessing in Octavia is registered with the Crown," Naomi said. "Every man. Every god. Every skill. No exceptions."
"But at the shrine, you told Lady Odile no records."
"I bought us time." Her jaw tightened. "Not forever."
So that's what that was.
Not a plan. A delay. Big Sis had looked at Elysia's light and done the only thing she could think of in that moment: slam the door shut and hold it closed with her whole body.
"The report goes out under my seal," she went on. "As Countess of Greymark, my name is on it. Which means all of our names are on it."
"So the question isn't whether we tell the Queen," Hana said softly. "It's what we tell her."
Naomi nodded once.
"We can tell the truth. Or we can lie."
The word just hung there.
Marika snorted. "Lie to the Crown. Sure. Brilliant. While we're at it, why don't we ride over to Bellonia and pick a fight?"
"Marika."
"What? Somebody has to say it." She turned away from the window. "If we lie and get caught, we don't just lose Greymark. We lose our titles. Our knighthood. Everything." Her voice dropped. "Lying about a blessing is treason. They can execute us for it."
The room went very quiet.
I swallowed. "All of us?"
"Not you," Naomi said. "You're a man. And a Saint. Nobody would lay a finger on you."
That should have made me feel better.
It didn't, because of what she said next.
"They'd just take you."
Oh.
So that was the real worst case. Not me getting hurt. Me getting handed off to some other house like a prize, while my sisters...
I couldn't even finish the thought.
"Then we tell the truth," I said.
"The truth has its own price." Naomi looked at me for a long moment. "A Saint in a border county. Every noble house in Octavia will want you. Some of them will want you badly enough to stop asking politely."
"You think three letters a week is bad?" Marika muttered. "Try three a day."
Hana's hand found mine and squeezed.
Naomi pushed off from the fireplace and crossed the room until she stood right in front of me.
"Before we decide anything, I need to know exactly what we're dealing with." Her eyes held mine. "Your skills, Fabian. What do you remember?"
It's a strange feeling, knowing something you never learned.
Ever since the shrine, they'd been there. Sitting quietly at the back of my mind, like books on a shelf I'd never noticed before. I didn't have to search for them. I just reached, and there they were, names and all, as if I'd known them my whole life.
"Three," I said. "I got three skills."
"Three," Naomi repeated.
"The first one is 「Heal」." The name felt warm in my mouth. "It closes wounds. That's the simplest way to put it."
Hana let out a small breath. She didn't look surprised. She looked like someone checking items off a list.
"The second is 「Cure」. It purges poison and sickness from the body."
"Wait here." Hana slipped off the arm of my chair and went straight to the tallest shelf. She had to stand on her toes to reach the top row. When she came back, she was holding a thick, leather-bound book with a faded green spine.
"Records of the Saints of Elysia," she read from the cover. "Father kept it. He used to read me stories from it when I couldn't sleep."
I hadn't known that.
She turned the pages with careful fingers. "Here. Every Saint on record received 「Heal」 and 「Cure」. They're Elysia's skills. No other god grants them." She looked up at me. "So far, you're exactly what a Saint should be."
"And the third?" Naomi asked.
I hesitated.
"The third one's... weird."
Marika narrowed her eyes. "Weird how?"
"It's called 「Covenant」."
Hana turned a page. Then another. Then she started flipping faster, scanning each entry, her lips moving silently. She reached the last page and stopped.
"It's not here," she said.
"Check again," said Naomi.
"I'm checking." Hana went back to the beginning, slower this time. The fireplace was cold, but I could've sworn the room got colder with every page.
Finally, she closed the book.
"This record goes back to the founding of Octavia," she said quietly. "Every Saint. Every skill. There's never been a 「Covenant」. Not once."
Nobody said anything.
Great. So I'm not just rare. I'm a typo in history.
"What does it do?" Naomi asked.
I took a breath and reached for it. The knowledge unfolded slowly in my head, the way a map does.
"It binds me to someone. Up to three people," I said. "Once it's done, we're connected. We'd always know where each other are. Whether we're hurt. Whether we're... okay."
Hana's hand went still on the book.
"And the people I bind get stronger. All of it. Strength, speed, endurance. How much depends on how strong my magic is." I hesitated. "And once it's done, it can't be undone. Ever."
For a second, the reading room was silent.
Then all three of my sisters spoke at the exact same time.
"Me."
"I'll do it."
"Bind me, Fabian."
They stopped. Turned. Stared at each other.
Uh-oh.
"I'm the head of this house," Naomi said. "Your safety is my responsibility. It should be me."
"You spend half the week behind a desk," Marika shot back. "I'm the one out on patrol. If something happens to him, I'm the closest."
"You patrol the east road. He lives in the west wing."
"That's not the point—"
"If he gets hurt," Hana said gently, "I'd know right away. I could reach him before anyone else." She hugged the book to her chest. "And I'm always the one who notices first anyway."
"The stat boost would be wasted on you," Marika told her. "You carry salve."
"Then I'd carry more salve. Faster."
I had to bite my cheek. Hard.
"And for the record," Marika added, crossing her arms, "this isn't about him. I just want the stat boost. Obviously. Who wouldn't want to be stronger?"
"Sis Marika, two seconds ago you said 'if something happens to him.'"
"I said nothing like that."
"You said exactly—"
"Nothing like that."
Her ears were bright pink. I decided to let her win this one.
"Um," I said. "It's up to three people."
They all turned to look at me.
"There are three of you," I pointed out.
Silence again. A different kind, this time. Naomi glanced at Marika. Marika glanced at Hana. Hana glanced down at the book in her arms.
Something twisted in my chest. Warm and heavy at the same time.
Three slots. Three sisters. And no way to ever take it back.
As far as I could tell, three was all I got. If I gave them away now, that was it. Forever.
And the scary part was how little that scared me.
"Enough." Naomi's voice cut through the room. "It can't be undone. We don't decide something like that tonight."
She held my gaze until I nodded. Then she looked at her sisters until they nodded too. Marika took the longest.
"First," Naomi said, "the Queen."
And just like that, we were back where we'd started.
If anything, it was worse now.
"A Saint is a treasure," Naomi said. She was pacing, five steps to the window and five steps back. "A Saint who can make three knights permanently stronger is something else."
"A weapon," Marika said flatly.
"And people fight over weapons." Naomi stopped pacing. "The Crown. The noble houses. Bellonia. If they learn what 「Covenant」 does, Fabian stops being a person to them. He becomes an army."
"And it can't be undone," Hana whispered. "If someone forced him to bind them..."
She didn't finish.
She didn't have to. I could finish it myself.
Then I'd belong to them. Forever.
"So we lie," Marika said. "Say he got something harmless. Earth magic. Turnips."
"Odile saw Elysia's light," Naomi said.
"Odile gave you her word."
"Odile's word won't stop him from healing someone in front of witnesses." Naomi looked at me. "And he will. The first time someone bleeds in front of him, he'll use it. I know him."
...Okay, that's fair.
"And the moment he does," Naomi went on, "the lie falls apart, and we're all traitors."
Marika threw up her hands. "So we can't lie, and we can't tell the truth. Great. Wonderful. Should we just lock him in the cellar until he's forty?"
"Don't tempt me," Naomi said.
"Hey."
Marika had drifted back to the window. She lifted one corner of the curtain with a finger, looked out, and went still.
"There are people at the gate."
Naomi's head came up. "How many?"
"...More than there were a minute ago."
I got up to look. Nobody told me to sit down, which said a lot about how the afternoon was going.
Past the front courtyard, the estate gate was shut. On the other side of it stood half the lower town: the baker in her apron, the girls from the tailor's shop, a farmer who'd come straight from the fields with her hoe still on her shoulder. Children had climbed up onto the wall to see better. Our guard captain stood on the inside of the gate with her arms folded, saying one short word to all of them, over and over.
"Later," Hana said softly. "She's telling them later."
"Because Big Sis told her to." Marika let the curtain fall. "Later doesn't last forever."
Outside, someone shouted my name. Someone else laughed. The light through the curtains had already gone from gold to orange.
Naomi looked at the window for a long moment.
"By tomorrow, they'll have an answer," she said. "Ours, or somebody else's." She turned back to us. "So we decide tonight."
Nobody had an answer. I went back to my chair, and something Lady Odile had said kept circling in my head.
A light like hers was never meant to stay hidden.
She was right. We couldn't hide everything.
But maybe we didn't have to.
"Skills come gradually," I said slowly.
Three heads turned toward me.
"That's how it works, right? They show up over time. Nobody gets everything on the first day." I sat up straighter. "So we tell the truth. I'm a Saint. Elysia chose me. I have 「Heal」 and 「Cure」."
"And 「Covenant」?" Naomi asked.
"Hasn't shown up yet."
Silence.
"That," Marika said, "is a lie."
"It's a... delayed truth."
"That's not a thing."
"It's a thing now."
"He's right, though," Hana said, her eyes widening. "If anyone asks later, a new skill appearing months after the ceremony is perfectly normal. Nobody would think twice."
Naomi didn't answer. She stood at the window with her back to us, very still, the way she did when she was weighing something heavy.
"It's still a risk," she said finally.
"A smaller one," I said. "Smaller than lying about everything. Smaller than telling them everything."
A long pause.
Then Naomi turned around.
"「Heal」 and 「Cure」," she said. "That's what the Queen hears. That's what everyone hears." Her eyes moved from me, to Marika, to Hana. "「Covenant」 never leaves this room. Understood?"
"Understood," Hana said.
"Understood," I said.
Marika sighed through her nose. "Fine. Understood." She pointed at me. "But if we get executed for this, I'm haunting you."
"You'd haunt me anyway."
"Obviously."
Naomi was already at Father's old desk, pulling out a sheet of heavy paper and the Valcrest seal. She dipped the pen in ink and paused, just for a moment, before she started to write.
I watched her shoulders as she wrote. They looked exactly the way they had ten years ago, when she was fifteen and sitting at this same desk long after midnight.
Except this time, I was old enough to see what they were carrying.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
Marika's sword leaned against the wall by my bed, catching a thin line of moonlight. I stared at the ceiling and listened to the house settle around me.
「Heal」. 「Cure」. 「Covenant」.
The names sat quietly in my head, patient as stones.
I thought about Father. About how he'd followed Mother into every battle, every mission, because he couldn't stand the idea of her going somewhere he couldn't follow.
And I thought about the day they didn't come back. How long we'd waited by the gate. How nobody could tell us anything until it was already too late.
With 「Covenant」, I'd never have to wait like that again.
I'd always know.
I rolled over and pulled the blanket up to my chin.
Earlier, when we'd left the reading room, all three of my sisters had glanced back at me at the exact same moment. Same look. Same narrowed eyes.
I knew that look. It was the look of three knights planning a siege.
Naomi had said we wouldn't decide tonight.
She hadn't said anything about tomorrow.