The door didn't get a knock.
It got a shoulder.
It flew open so hard it bounced off the wall, and Marika came through it like the east road had personally insulted her: one loose braid flying, nightclothes rumpled, both hands balled into fists.
"I CAN FEEL HER!"
Hana was right behind her in her night robe and shawl, holding a candle in both hands, her hair loose down her back. She hadn't bothered with slippers either.
They both stopped.
They looked at me, standing in the middle of my room.
Then they looked at the princess, sitting on the very corner of my bed in a long white night robe and a shawl, bare feet tucked up under her, a candle on the desk beside her.
Then they looked at each other.
Then back at the princess.
Hana's mouth fell open. Marika's didn't, but only because her jaw had locked.
I'd had a theory about night robes. Hana and the princess were wearing nearly the same one. It was not helping.
"Your Highness?" Hana squeaked.
"Good evening, Lady Hana," the princess said. "Lady Marika."
"Baroness," said Marika automatically, and then looked horrified at herself.
Behind them came footsteps. Steady. Unhurried.
Naomi walked in, in the same shirt and trousers she'd worn in the war room, with ink on her fingers. She looked at me. She looked at the princess. She looked at the last faint green glow fading from my floorboards.
She did not look surprised.
Of course she didn't. She'd known for two weeks that the princess knew. Whatever she'd said in the stables, she'd been waiting for this night ever since.
"So," Naomi said. "She told you."
"You knew?" said Marika.
Naomi ignored her. She looked at the princess, and something passed between them that I couldn't read. Then she looked at me.
"And you said yes."
It wasn't a question. I answered it anyway.
"I said yes."
Naomi nodded once, as if I'd told her the weather. She shut the door behind her, quietly, and leaned against it with her arms folded.
"Go on," she said to Hana and Marika. "You'll ask anyway."
They went on.
Marika crossed the room in two strides and planted herself in front of the princess, arms crossed, chin up. She had to look down to do it, which she clearly enjoyed.
"Light armor," Marika said. "Fast."
The princess blinked. "...Yes?"
"The reading room door. The night before the tide. That was you."
"That was me."
"I knew it." Marika spun toward Naomi. "I said! I said light armor, fast!"
"You did," said Naomi.
Marika spun back. "And you're Beth."
"I'm Beth."
"Beth who beat him twice in the yard."
"Four times now. Counting this week."
"Beth who followed him out the gate on the night of the tide."
"She didn't say which side of the gate," the princess said, a little helplessly.
Marika's eyes narrowed. "What are you after?"
"After?"
"You're a princess. Princesses don't knock on people's doors at midnight in their night robes for no reason. What do you want with him? Is this your mother's idea? Because if your mother thinks she can—"
"My mother doesn't know."
"Then whose idea—"
"Mine."
"Why?"
Hana stepped in then. Gently. She set her candle down beside the princess's on my desk, so there were two candles side by side, and then she sat down on the bed right next to her, which made the princess jump.
"Sis Marika," Hana said. "Let her breathe."
"I'm letting her breathe!"
"You're breathing on her."
Marika stepped back exactly one step.
Hana turned to the princess with her warmest, kindest, most dangerous smile. I knew that smile. It was the one she used right before she found out everything about you.
"Your feet are bare," Hana said.
"...They are."
"On this floor? At this hour? You'll catch cold." Hana slipped off her own shawl, folded it, and tucked it around the princess's feet before anyone could stop her. "There. Did you eat tonight?"
"I— at dinner."
"Properly?"
"I had the soup."
"Only the soup." Hana made a note in her head. I could actually watch her make it. "How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"Any siblings besides Her Highness?"
"No. Just Cor."
"Do you get along?"
"Mostly. She thinks I'm a disaster."
"Are you?"
"...Mostly."
"Do you like him?"
The princess choked.
"Hana!" said Marika.
"I'm only asking!"
"You can't just ask—"
The princess's hand had closed around my bedpost. There was a small, dry crack.
Everyone looked at the bedpost.
"That one was already structurally disappointing," said Marika.
"I'll pay for it," said the princess faintly.
"With what?" Marika demanded. "Do princesses even carry money?"
"Not in my night robe!"
"Sit up straight," Hana told her, "and answer the question, young lady—"
She stopped.
The whole room stopped.
Hana had just called the Second Princess of Octavia young lady. In the voice she used on me when I didn't finish my vegetables.
Hana went white. Then red. "Your— Your Highness, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—"
And the princess laughed.
Not the polite laugh from the feast. The real one.
"Nobody," she said, wiping her eyes, "has ever talked to me like this. Ever. Except Cor. And Cor's my sister." She looked from Hana to Marika, delighted. "Do it again."
Hana and Marika stared at her.
"...She's strange," Marika said to me, as if the princess weren't sitting right there.
"Capital thing," I said.
The princess threw Hana's shawl at my head.
"She didn't answer the question," Naomi observed from the door.
"She broke a bedpost," said Hana. "That's an answer."
Marika turned around, slowly.
"Naomi."
"Mm."
"You knew."
"Yes."
"How long?"
Naomi considered the question honestly, which was the worst thing she could have done.
"Two weeks."
"TWO WEEKS?"
"Shh," said the princess, Hana and I, all at once. Agnes.
"Two weeks," Marika hissed, "and you didn't tell us?"
"She promised to keep it. She kept it." Naomi lifted one shoulder. "Nothing to tell."
"Nothing to—" Marika made a noise like a kettle about to boil over.
And then all three of my sisters turned, slowly, like one person, and looked at me.
Oh, I thought. Here it comes.
"Fabian," said Hana.
"Fabian," said Marika.
Naomi didn't say anything. Her eyebrow did.
"Why," Marika said, "didn't you talk to us first?"
"It's forever," Hana said. Her eyes were already shining. "You said so yourself. Forever. And it isn't only you. It's us too. We'll feel her. Always. You could have asked."
"You didn't ask me," I said.
"What?"
"The first time. You all knocked on my door, one after another, and none of you asked each other first. Sis Hana knocked before anyone. Sis Marika hid in a wardrobe."
"That's different!"
"How?"
"We're your sisters!"
"And she," I said, "is going to be standing next to me in Sanctara."
That stopped them.
I took a breath.
"You can't come. Not to the Academy. You've got the march to hold, and the east road, and the town, and your titles. You can't be there." I swallowed. "But now, when I'm there, there'll be someone right beside me that you can feel. If something happens to her, you'll know. If something happens to me, she'll know too, and she'll be right there to do something about it. Not nine days away. Right there."
Silence.
"And she kept the secret," I said, "before she asked for anything. She told me she'd keep it whatever I answered. So it wasn't a trade."
Hana looked at the princess. The princess looked at the floor.
"...She did that?" Hana said softly.
"She did that."
Marika's arms were still crossed. But her chin had come down an inch.
"That's," she said, very grudgingly, "actually tactics."
"It's tactics," I agreed.
"Don't steal my word."
Hana sniffled. Then she leaned over and tucked her shawl around the princess's feet again, very carefully, as if it had never been thrown at my head.
"You should still have asked," she said.
"Next time, I'll ask."
"There is no next time," said Naomi. "Four of four."
"Until he ranks up again," said Marika.
Naomi looked at me. "Then he'll ask."
"Then I'll ask," I said.
All through it, the princess sat on the corner of my bed with her chin on her knees and Hana's shawl over her feet, watching the four of us argue.
She was smiling.
Not the polite smile from the gate. Something smaller and softer. Like someone who'd been cold for a long time, watching a fire finally catch.
Naomi pushed off the door.
"Bed," she said. "All of you."
Nobody argued. It was very late, and it's hard to argue with Naomi at any hour, let alone this one.
Hana stood and held out her hand to the princess. "I'll walk you to your room, Your Highness."
The princess looked at the hand. Then up at Hana.
"Liesel," she said.
Hana blinked.
"If you can feel where I am for the rest of your life," the princess said, "you should probably call me Liesel."
Hana's face did the thing it does right before she cries. She managed not to, mostly.
"...Liesel," she said. "Keep the shawl."
Marika was already at the door. She stopped there with one hand on the frame, not quite looking back.
"Liesel."
"Yes?"
"If you get him killed in Sanctara, I'm haunting you."
"You'll feel it if I try," said Liesel.
Marika thought about that. Her ears went pink.
"...Exactly," she said, and left.
Hana and Liesel went after her, two night robes and two candles, down the dark hall.
That left Naomi.
She crossed the room and put her hand on my head, the way she always does. It stayed there a while.
Then she leaned down, very slightly, and said in exactly the voice she uses to report the weather:
"A future wife might need one."
"Big Sis!"
From halfway down the hall came a strangled noise that was definitely Liesel, and then Marika's voice, much too loud for midnight: "NAOMI!"
Naomi took her hand off my head.
"Laps," she said. "Tomorrow. For the bedpost."
"I didn't break the bedpost!"
"Your guest did. Your laps."
She closed the door behind her.
I stood in the middle of my room for a while, listening to the house settle.
Four candles.
Hana's, walking slowly beside the new one and probably still asking about soup. Marika's, stomping back to bed. Naomi's, heading back toward the war room, because of course it was.
And the fourth one. Still flickering. Still jumping.
But slower now. Like a candle that had finally been carried in out of the wind.
There were two splashes left in the bottom of the pitcher. The pitcher doesn't care what kind of night you've had. So I sat on the edge of my bed and spent them on myself.
The room tilted, gently.
From down the hall, very faintly: "I can feel that."
And then, from the guest room, even fainter, a brand-new voice:
"...So can I."