Of course, bloodlines weren’t supposed to matter; many Gens, and the most successful, were composed of dozens of unrelated kith-kins who often married to expand their ranks or skills or capabilities. Brio and Lexi’s two families, however, had formed their small Gen together. Their fathers were aspiring pleaders with a shared interest in helping revitalize and help the people of the Bottoms. They had grown Stalbraid together, their kith-kins forming a fierce bond in the process, and however Crache attempted to stamp it out of them, people remain creatures of habit and tradition. There was no law or rule, even in the extreme and unending minutiae of Crachian doctrine, that demanded Brio and Lexi marry in order to continue their Gen. But bloodlines mattered to his father, and so they mattered to Brio. He knew what the man expected of him, and that was to carry their Gen forward in what his father deemed the “right way,” though he and Lexi had yet to get around to that part of it. He had always imagined there would be more time for things like children.

All those things are why Brio didn’t question their decision to turn Ashana away, deeply though it panged him as a child.

Now, after everything he’s been through in the past few months and seeing her willingness to go to such lengths on his behalf, Brio wishes he’d protested when it mattered. He will never stop revering his father, but he’s past viewing the long-deceased man as infallible. Brio knows now that his father was wrong about her.

“I shouldn’t have let them turn you away,” he whispers suddenly in the dark. “It was wrong. I knew that.”

“You were just a boy,” Evie reminds him dispassionately.

The lack of emotion in her voice surprises him. “How can you say that so easily? How is it you don’t hate all of us? How can you not hate me for what happened? Why would you even agree to risk your life like this for me?”

At first Evie is silent.

Brio can scarcely make out the lines of her face, let alone read her expression.

“I was angry at the time,” she finally says, her tone more thoughtful than anything else. “And for a long time after. I was furious.”

“What changed?” Brio presses her.

“Your Gen plucked me off the streets, Brio. They fed me, clothed me, educated me. They gave me a way into a world I never would have found on my own. They didn’t owe me anything. None of you owed me. If anything, I owed all of you for what you did for me. Your father had every right to put me out. His reasons were his own, whatever I think about them. I made my way, didn’t I? What do I have to be angry about now?”

“That’s very enlightened of you,” Brio says with irony.