CHAPTER FIVE ATHENA’S POV

The crack in the ceiling above my bed didn’t have any answers, no matter how long I stared at it. I traced it with my eyes again and again in the dark while the social worker’s words kept looping in my head on repeat. Foster care. Unknown town. Unknown people. I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them until my chin pressed into them, the hospital blanket scratchy against my bare calves. No warm memories of my parents came to comfort me, no matter how hard I dug for them — only slammed doors and shouting matches I used to hide from under the blankets with my teddy bear pressed over my ears. Maybe the accident had been its own kind of mercy, cruel as that felt to admit even just to myself in the dark.

A flicker of movement outside the window made me sit up straight, heart lurching. I pushed the stiff hospital blanket off and walked across the cold floor in bare feet, the tile biting up through my soles. The glass felt smooth and cool under my palms as I pressed close to it, breath fogging a small circle. “Hello?” My voice came out thin, swallowed instantly by the dark outside. The night answered with distant traffic and crickets, ordinary sounds that did nothing to settle the prickle at the back of my neck. Nothing moved in the shadows below, not that I could see, but the feeling of being watched didn’t fully let go of me either.

The door opened behind me. Mrs. Sophia came in with Divine, both of them looking concerned, exchanging a glance I wasn’t meant to catch.

“I thought I saw someone,” I said quickly, stepping back from the window like I’d been caught doing something wrong. “Probably just my imagination after the accident.”

Divine walked to the window and scanned the dark methodically, the way you’d check a room out of habit rather than actual worry. “No one’s there. The shock’s still messing with you.” She sat beside me on the bed after, and her hand was warm when it covered mine, grounding in a way I hadn’t expected to need.

Mrs. Sophia cleared her throat, folder pressed to her chest. “Athena, we have some news — some difficult, some good.”

I lifted my head, my heart thudding hard against my ribs, bracing for whichever half came first.

“The difficult part is that we’ve found a foster placement for you.” She watched my face fall before I could stop it. “I know you weren’t excited about that this morning.”

My fingers curled into the thin sheets, twisting the fabric. Another house. Another set of strangers I might never belong to, another set of rules to learn the hard way.

“But the good news,” she added, a small smile breaking through the careful, professional mask she’d been wearing since I met her, “is that your foster family will be Miss Divine’s.”

It took a second for the words to land, sliding into place slowly like they had to travel further than usual to reach me. Then warmth spread through my chest, melting the knot that had sat in my stomach since the moment I’d woken up in this room. I looked at Divine and felt my first real smile since the accident tug at my mouth, unpracticed and a little shaky.

Divine opened her arms, and I leaned into the hug without hesitation, breathing in the faint lavender soap on her scrubs, familiar already after only two days. The warmth of it pushed back the cold that had settled deep in my bones since the crash, some of it anyway. “Thank you,” I whispered, my voice thick. “Thank you so much.”

She held me tighter, one hand smoothing over my hair. “I told you things would work out.”

Mrs. Sophia chuckled softly, tucking her tablet under her arm. “We still need to finish the paperwork, Miss Divine.”

“Right.” Divine gave my shoulder one last squeeze before following her out, throwing me a small smile over her shoulder on the way.

I lay back against the pillows once the door clicked shut, and for the first time the crack in the ceiling didn’t look endless anymore, just a crack, ordinary and small. For the first time since the accident, I didn’t feel like I was just waiting for the next bad thing to happen. I closed my eyes and pictured laughter around a dinner table that wasn’t filled with arguments, a bedroom that actually felt like mine, someone who wanted me there instead of tolerating me out of obligation.

I had no idea the door I was stepping through led somewhere far stranger than any foster home I could have pictured lying there that night.

Later, after the lights had dimmed for the night and the hallway outside had gone quiet except for the occasional squeak of a cart wheel, I found myself still awake, turning the day over one more time before I let myself actually sleep. I thought about the flicker outside the window, the one Divine had so easily written off as shock. Maybe she was right. Maybe grief made the mind conjure things that weren’t there, shapes out of shadows, movement out of stillness. But some quiet, stubborn part of me didn’t believe that, not fully, not the way I wanted to.

I thought, too, about the scars that had vanished overnight, skin healed smooth as if the accident had never touched me at all, and how neither Divine nor Mrs. Sophia had said a single word about it, like maybe they hadn’t noticed, or maybe they had and simply weren’t saying. I filed that thought away with all the others I didn’t have answers for yet, a growing list I was keeping without quite admitting to myself that I was keeping it.

Somewhere down the hall, a door opened and closed, followed by the low murmur of voices too quiet to make out. I told myself it was just hospital business, nurses trading updates, nothing that had anything to do with me. I almost believed it long enough to finally drift off, the last thought before sleep pulled me under being Divine’s face when she’d said I told you things would work out, and how badly I wanted that to turn out to be true.