BLOOD TIES

There were five of us, five to form a family, five to fight and squabble, to love and hate. Jae’le and myself were the oldest, and Aelyn and Eidan, the youngest. The middle sibling was Tinh Tu, quiet, dangerous Tinh Tu. She was the connective tissue for us, the bridge for generations, the mediator for our arguments, our fights. We required her to be that, for we were the children of the gods. We had come to claim what our parents had left. We came to claim land, to claim people, to claim minds—and, like so many children of a worthy inheritance, we did not plan to take what was ours in terms of equity.

—Qian, The Godless