Falynn, Dirva’s older brother, was a healer, trained in three different elvish traditions and mundane Qin doctoring by a close family friend. Sorcha had told the truth when he’d said he looked nothing like Falynn: like Cadlah, Falynn had his father’s pale red elvish skin and his mother’s black hair. Like Dirva, he was tall. His eyes had the same startling brightness as Dirva’s. They may not have looked alike, but there was a lot of Falynn in Sorcha. Falynn was the beauty of the family, and he knew it. He was someone who was used to being looked at, used to being fawned over. The first thing that came to mind when I met him was my father’s lectures about the golden ratio, how beauty is beautiful only in the right proportions. Falynn was a study in perfect proportions. He was distinctly androgynous, a wild sort of beauty that flickered between masculinity and femininity moment to moment. Beyond the beauty was an effortless charisma, a natural charm. It was strange, then, that Falynn was always shadowed by Amran. Amran is a well-known poet both inside and outside of the Empire—like Liro, he is part of the Nahsiyya Movement. But his gentle poems do not give you a sense of the man. He is a force. A dark thing, a man with an icy cruelty right at the center of him. Amran and Falynn together are a study in contrast and balance. One thing they had in common is that neither ever forgave Dirva for leaving.

Dirva’s return was something that threw this family out of balance. It was unexpected, and it was unsettling. I think they thought they knew him better than they did. They had an idea of who he was which calcified into family lore over the years of his absence, and his return did not fit neatly into the mold they had cast for him. It brought out buried hatchets. It raised ghosts of half-remembered childhood rivalries. The family dinners I attended were storms with Dirva at the center, but Dirva himself seemed peculiarly unaffected. He paid very little attention to anyone but his da, and his da paid little attention to anyone but Dirva.