Shae was filled with a nameless, foreboding fearfulness for her nephew. Niko was still young—too young, she thought, to be so clear-eyed and grim of character. Yet he’d already contemplated the legacy of the clan and the weight of leadership far more than Lan or Hilo or herself at his age. Shae and her brothers had grown up with the sentimental expectations that came from being the grandchildren of the Torch of Kekon, heirs to the clan following a generation of victory, peace, and national reconstruction. They had each, in their own way, been forced into their positions and done the best they
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