On Sunday morning, everyone in the house started glowing.
Not a lot. Just a thin line of light around each person, like frost along the edge of a window.
I noticed it on Agnes first.
She was crossing the hall with a stack of folded linen, and the light followed her outline exactly: her shoulders, her elbows, the neat bun on top of her head. Soft and white, so faint I'd have missed it if the hall weren't still dim.
"Good morning, Young Master."
"...Morning, Agnes."
I rubbed my eyes. She kept glowing.
Okay, I thought. Maybe I swung too hard this morning.
But it had been a perfectly normal morning. Five hundred swings. One lost spar against a sister using one hand. A bath. Nothing that should make the head maid look like a candle somebody forgot to blow out.
Two maids passed me on the stairs. White. White.
Tilly came in from the stables with straw in her hair and a sniffle. White, with the faintest wash of yellow mixed in, like weak tea.
Then I stepped out into the courtyard, and there was Sigrid.
Sigrid was white too. Mostly.
But threaded through her light was the same pale yellow, a little stronger than Tilly's. Like a stain in good cloth.
"Young Master." She straightened. "Is something wrong?"
"Are you hurt?"
She blinked. Sigrid didn't blink often. "No, Young Master."
"Are you sure?"
A pause. "...I cut my hand on the whetstone this morning." She held it up. A neat slice across the palm, already crusted over. "It's nothing."
It was nothing. It was exactly the kind of nothing I closed sixteen times every afternoon.
I held out my hand. Sigrid knew better than to argue with a Saint before breakfast. She gave me hers.
The White circle bloomed. A splash from the pitcher. The cut sealed.
And the yellow faded out of her light like breath off a mirror.
I stared at her.
She stared at me staring at her.
"Thank you, Young Master," she said slowly. "Are you hurt?"
"I don't think so," I said. "But I might be going mad."
I went back inside, sat down on the bottom step of the stairs, and did the thing I should have done first.
I checked my skills.
「Heal」. 「Cure」. 「Covenant」. 「Mass Heal」. 「Vigor」. All exactly where I'd left them.
Then 「Blessing of Elysia」.
The question marks were still there. Most of them.
But one row had changed.
「Blessing of Elysia」 (Passive)
For every good deed you do, Elysia will grant you a reward.
Reward granted: 「Eyes of Elysia」. See the light of life in others. The further it strays from white, the more they need you.
?????
?????
I read it three times.
Then I thought about Elysia's statue at the shrine. The old gray stone, older than the other seven. The hands folded in prayer.
The eyes closed.
She lent me her eyes, I thought. And she can't even open her own.
That put a strange feeling in my chest. Not a bad one. Just a big one.
"You're glowing," I told Hana at breakfast.
She touched her cheek. "Am I? Is it the new soap?"
"No. I mean, maybe. But no."
I told them everything. Agnes and her linen. Tilly's sniffle. Sigrid's hand, and the yellow going out of her like a snuffed candle. Then the new line under the question marks.
When I finished, Marika put down her bread. "So you can see when people are hurt."
"I can see when something's wrong. Not what. Tilly's cold and Sigrid's cut looked almost the same. Sigrid's was just a little darker."
"A reward," Hana said softly. "For good deeds."
"I guess."
"Four hundred and twenty-six."
I looked at her. "What?"
"People. That you've healed." She didn't even reach for her notebook. "Since the first afternoon."
"You know that by heart?"
"I know everything about you by heart," Hana said, as if that settled it.
Marika leaned her elbows on the table. "So what do we look like?"
I looked at them properly for the first time that morning.
Hana's light was white and soft at the edges, like lamplight through a curtain. Marika's was white too, but sharper somehow, as if it couldn't sit still around her.
Then I looked at Naomi.
White. And threaded all through it, faint but there, yellow.
"You're yellow," I said.
Naomi didn't look up from her plate. "I'm not hurt."
"Sigrid said that too. Right before she showed me her hand."
"I'm not hurt," Naomi said again.
She wasn't lying. I could feel that. Through the bond, her lantern burned as steady as it always did.
But underneath the steadiness was the same thing I'd felt the night of the vows. A deep, quiet tiredness, like a wall that had been holding something up for a very long time.
Hana and Marika felt it too. I could tell, because both of them suddenly got very interested in their eggs.
"Tired counts," I said quietly.
For a second, I thought Naomi would argue. Instead she set down her fork, wiped her mouth, and said, "Noted."
Then she stood.
"I'm riding out after breakfast."
Marika's head came up. "The Gloamwood?"
"Monthly sweep."
I knew about the monthly sweep the way you know about weather. Once a month, Naomi took a few guards into the Gloamwood. The entrance to the mid, never the core. She checked the tracks, cleared out whatever had wandered too close to Greymark, and came home before dark.
She'd done it every month for ten years.
The last one had been the week before my Welcoming Age. She'd come back with that fresh scratch across her gauntlet, and she still hadn't said what made it.
I'd never thought much about it. It was just a thing Naomi did, like sparring with one hand, or filing marriage proposals near the fireplace.
But I'd never seen her yellow before.
"I'm coming," I said.
"No."
"I'm a Saint."
"You're seventeen."
"I'm a seventeen-year-old Saint. If somebody gets hurt in there, I'm the only healer in Greymark."
"Then nobody gets hurt."
"You don't know that."
"I've done this a hundred and twenty times," Naomi said. "I know that."
"Then the hundred and twenty-first will be extra boring, and I'll be extra safe."
"No."
I took a breath. This was the part I'd been turning over since the moment she said Gloamwood.
"And now I can see when people are hurt, even when they say they're not," I said. "Which is apparently all the time, in this family."
Naomi's eyes narrowed. Just slightly.
"No," she said.
I'd known she would say that. I'd known it the way you know the floor is there when you stand up. So I said the other thing. The thing I'd been carrying around since the night of the vows.
"For ten years, I watched you ride out of that gate every month," I said. "I used to stand there until I couldn't see you anymore. Then I'd stand there a little longer."
The table had gone very quiet.
"Now I don't have to stand at the gate," I went on. "Now I can feel exactly how far away you are. Every step." I swallowed. "Turns out that's worse."
Naomi looked at me for a long moment.
"No," she said. But it came out softer.
Soft wasn't yes. So I did the thing I'm not proud of.
"Fine," I said. "Then after you leave, I'll go anyway."
Marika's cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
"You won't," Naomi said.
"I'll take the gray mare. Tilly won't stop me. She's too nice."
Hana's hands flew to her mouth. "Fabian! Alone? The Queen's law—"
"I know the law."
"We'd find you in minutes," Naomi said flatly.
"You would," I agreed. "Through the bond. After you were already a mile into the forest. With me alone on the road behind you."
Nobody said anything.
It was a terrible plan. I knew it was a terrible plan. Naomi knew I knew. That was the point.
"You'd do it," she said slowly.
"I'd hate it," I said. "But I'd do it."
Marika put her cup down. "He would," she told Naomi. "Remember the hunger strike."
"It lasted until lunch," Naomi said.
"He meant it until lunch."
Naomi closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she wasn't looking at her little brother anymore. She was looking at a problem she had to solve before it solved itself in a worse way.
"Middle of the column," she said. "You don't draw your sword unless I say. You don't heal anyone unless I say. You go where I point. You come home when I say."
"Yes."
"Say it back."
"Middle of the column. No sword unless you say. No healing unless you say. I go where you point. I come home when you say."
"And if you ever threaten me like that again," Naomi said, "you'll be swinging until you're forty."
"That's fair."
"It wasn't a question."
Marika was already on her feet. "Then I'm coming."
"Me too," Hana said, standing so fast her chair scraped. "I'll get my hammer, and the big tin of salve, and—"
"No."
Both of them froze.
"Marika. East road."
"The east road is boring—"
"East road." Naomi turned. "Hana. The estate."
"But if something happens to him—"
"Then you'll know before I do." Naomi's voice didn't rise. It never had to. "And if the princess arrives early, someone has to be here to greet her."
"Someone who won't give her laps," Marika muttered.
"Ten laps."
"I didn't even—"
"Twenty."
Marika shut her mouth.
"It's the edge of the forest," Naomi said. "One knight is enough."
"Two is better," Hana said quietly.
"One is enough," Naomi said. "And the one is me."
That ended it. Naomi's decisions usually ended things.
But as she walked out of the dining room, I caught Hana's eye, and then Marika's. Neither of them looked convinced. And through the bond, both their candles were burning a little too bright.
Getting ready took longer than the argument.
Hana found me an old padded jerkin in the armory, the smallest one we owned, which was still too big. She buckled it on me herself. Then she tucked a tin of salve into my belt pouch, and a second tin into my other pouch, and a wrapped lunch into my saddlebag.
"We're going to the forest," I said. "Not a picnic."
"Monsters don't stop you from getting hungry," Hana said, and added an apple.
Marika came down the stairs already in her light armor, twin swords at her hips, ready for the east road. She stopped in front of me. Frowned. Then she grabbed my sword belt and yanked it two notches tighter.
"Ow."
"It was crooked." She didn't let go. "It was offending me."
"It's the same belt I wear every day."
"And it offends me every day. Today I had time." The tips of her ears went pink. She let go, turned, and was out the front door before I could say anything else.
A moment later, I heard her horse clatter out of the courtyard, heading east.
Naomi was waiting in the yard in full plate, her navy cape over one shoulder. Sigrid stood beside her with five more guards, all mounted.
Usually, Naomi took three guards on the monthly sweep. Today she was taking six: five guards and her captain.
That left the estate with one guard and Hana. Which, honestly, was still plenty. I'd seen Hana's warhammer.
Tilly led out the gray mare, the calmest horse we owned. Tilly swore she had never once been surprised by anything.
"Be careful, Young Master," Tilly whispered, handing me the reins. Then, even quieter: "Bring the horse back too, please."
"I'll do my best."
We rode out through the gate.
I'd ridden out through that gate plenty of times. To the shrine. Into town. But never this way. Never down the road my sisters took when they buckled on their armor and didn't say where they were going.
I looked back once.
Hana stood at the gate. Exactly where we used to stand.
She didn't wave. She just stood there with her hands folded tight in front of her apron, watching us go. Through the bond, her candle burned soft and warm and very, very worried.
For the first time in my life, I wasn't the one waiting at the gate.
It felt a lot less like winning than I'd expected.
The Gloamwood didn't start gradually. It just started.
One moment we were riding past the last fields of Greymark, with wheat on one side and sheep on the other. The next, there was a wall of trees in front of us, so tall and so dark that the morning seemed to stop at their edge.
Even from outside, the light under the branches looked like evening.
Naomi raised a hand, and the column stopped. We dismounted. One guard stayed with the horses at the forest edge. The rest of us gathered around Naomi.
I looked at them, one by one. Sigrid, white. Four guards, white. Not a thread of yellow among them.
Then Naomi turned to face me, and there it was again. White, with that faint thread of tired running through it.
"Rules," she said.
"I know the rules."
"Say them."
I sighed. "Middle of the column. No sword unless you say. No healing unless you say. I go where you point. I come home when you say."
"Sigrid behind you," Naomi said. "Two guards on each side. Me in front."
"What if something comes from above?"
Naomi looked at me. Then, very slowly, she looked up at the branches. Then back at me.
"Then I'll be very surprised," she said.
I couldn't tell if that was a joke. With Naomi, you never could.
She drew her sword. Plain steel, well-used, the same one she'd carried for as long as I could remember. Around me, five more blades came out of their sheaths with a soft, overlapping shhhk.
My hand drifted to my own hilt.
"No," Naomi said, without turning around.
My hand drifted back.
Then my sister stepped into the Gloamwood, and the rest of us followed.
It got darker almost immediately. The air was cooler, and damp, and smelled like moss and old leaves. Roots twisted across the path like the knuckles of something buried. Our boots were the loudest thing in the world.
That was what I noticed, after a while.
Our boots were the only thing in the world.
No birds. No rustling in the undergrowth. Not even insects.
"It's quiet today, my lady," Sigrid murmured behind me.
Naomi didn't answer.
But through the bond, I felt her lantern change. It didn't flicker. It got brighter, steadier, like someone turning up the wick before a long night.
Twenty steps into the Gloamwood, and my sister was already getting ready to fight.
Somewhere ahead of us, a branch snapped.