By the time everyone’s seated and eating, I’m starving. One of the Shor brothers tries to say hello, but I answer him with a mouthful of roasted quail. He smiles his way politely back to the corner table, which has Mother fuming. Father sits back, though, sipping his drink and laughing at me. Some of the girls my age already have matches lined up. They’ll be married in a few years, making babies in a few more. I’m not them. At least Father understands that truth.

When most of the plates have been picked clean, my uncles start clearing out tables in the main room of Amaya’s bar. They leave behind a great sprawling space for the dreamnots.

Prosper rushes over to join a handful of my younger cousins. All the girls wait in colorful dresses. The boys adjust their little neck scarves. Catching dreamnots is an old Dividian tradition. They’re one of the few creatures our ancestors brought to this land on that first voyage, and the only breed that didn’t die out in the brutal wilds of the Empire. So much of our culture—our dances and our songs—died the same way.

The Ashlords even took our names from us. The joke goes that—after the war—the Ashlord census takers were too lazy to write down our full names. Our braver history teachers whisper the truth, though. Reducing all of our surnames to four letters—Beru and Rahm and Shor—was a reminder of who was in power and of how much we still had to lose.

So I smile wide as my father stands to begin one of the few traditions they couldn’t destroy. The whole room falls quiet. He’s not particularly big, but he’s still the kind of man everyone notices. He walks across the room, and all the children take up eager stances. It’s not hard to remember when I was that little, how much I looked forward to trying to catch the dreamnot with my friends and cousins.

The children see the twinkle in Father’s eye as he stops before the door to Amaya’s supply closet. He smiles back at them and sets his hand on the knob. The door rattles loudly and I laugh, knowing Father’s just making noise to rile them up. The children in the front row take a cautious step back, eyes wild and excited. He opens the door and a herd of gray-blue creatures comes stampeding forward, each of them about the size of a teacup.

Farian always called them baby wolves with wings, and it’s not a bad description. The children scream with delight. One of the creatures takes flight, scrambling to get clear of swatting hands. Another set sprint off to the right, the fur along their backs bristling. Prosper’s the first to catch one and the first to draw out the true nature of dreamnots.