CHAPTER SEVEN

DIVINE’S POV

I left Athena’s room with Mrs. Sophia to finish the paperwork, my footsteps quick against the hospital tile. Something kept turning over in my chest the whole walk down, warmer than it had any right to be given how new all of this was. I told myself it was relief, seeing Athena smile like that for the first time. It wasn’t relief, though, not really. Whatever it was, I hadn’t earned it yet, and some part of me knew that even as I let myself feel it.

“Sign here, Miss Divine.” Mrs. Sophia’s voice was calm, businesslike, the kind of calm that comes from doing this a hundred times before with a hundred different kids who all needed something from her that she could only partly give.

I signed where she pointed, the pen scratching a little on the last letter of my name, ink running thin.

“You’re officially her guardian until family members come forward,” she said, capping her own pen and gathering the folder against her chest.

She was halfway to standing when she stopped, her whole body going still. Her eyes went past me to the door, and whatever was on her face made me turn too, adrenaline already spiking before I understood why.

Aunt Duval was already inside the room. I hadn’t heard the door, hadn’t caught her scent until she was already three feet away, which should have been impossible.

“Auntie.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted.

She didn’t look at me. She crossed straight to Mrs. Sophia, who sat back down without being told to, folder still clutched against her chest like it might protect her.

“I want every announcement of her appearance pulled. Now.” Aunt Duval said it the way she ordered coffee — no weight behind it because none was needed, the kind of certainty that came from never once being told no.

“We can’t just do that, Madam.” Mrs. Sophia’s hands found each other in her lap, knuckles pale.

“You can.” Aunt Duval dropped into the swivel chair behind the desk like she owned it, spun the little globe there once, twice, a soft rubbery squeak on each pass that filled the silence in a way that made my skin crawl.

I didn’t understand what I was watching. She’d walked past a security desk, an elevator, and a hallway of staff on her way in, and none of them had stopped her, and none of them ever did, not once in all the years I’d watched her move through rooms like this.

“Auntie, we can’t do this.” I made myself step closer, forcing steadiness into my voice I didn’t fully feel. “It could be considered—”

“It can, and it will.” She cut me off without raising her voice, which was somehow worse than if she’d shouted. “And she’ll be the one doing it. Won’t you, Mrs. Sophia?”

Mrs. Sophia lifted her chin, some last thread of pride holding on. “Why would I help you? I respect the law.”

Aunt Duval laughed, short and low, the kind of laugh that isn’t about anything being funny. “Do you. Cherry Anderson. The missing girl from 2012 — remember her?” She tossed a stack of folders onto the desk hard enough that a pen rolled off the edge and clattered to the floor, the sound loud in the small office.

Mrs. Sophia reached for the folders before they’d even settled, hands shaking slightly now. I watched her go through three pages and stop being the woman who’d told me I was officially a guardian five minutes ago, watched something go out of her posture entirely.

“How do you have this,” she said. It wasn’t a question anymore, just a statement dressed up as one.

“You’ve been placing children with couples who can pay, criminal record or no criminal record. When one goes missing, the support payments keep coming to your account for months after.” Aunt Duval stood and walked a slow circle around her chair, unhurried, the way a predator circles something it already knows it’s going to have. “You already know how to make an announcement disappear. Do it for Athena, and we’re done here.”

Mrs. Sophia nodded. She didn’t stop nodding for a while, like the motion had gotten stuck somewhere in her.

“Good girl.” Aunt Duval smiled — I don’t have a better word for it, though it wasn’t a smile the way I understood the word, more like a baring of teeth dressed up in politeness — and left without looking at me. Mrs. Sophia was two steps behind her, folder clutched to her chest, not looking at me either, like eye contact might make her complicit in something she hadn’t already agreed to.

I stood in the office by myself once they’d gone, the fluorescent light humming overhead. The globe was still turning, slower now, and I watched it stop before I let myself think anything at all, needing that small, stupid ritual before my thoughts caught up to what I’d just witnessed.

What the hell is going on. Whatever this was with Athena, it had roots I hadn’t seen yet, tangled deep under everything I thought I understood about my family, and I had a feeling I’d just watched one of them being pulled taut.

I bent down and picked the fallen pen up off the floor, turning it over in my fingers without really seeing it, my mind still catching up to what I’d just witnessed. I’d known my whole life that Aunt Duval carried weight in places most people never saw the edges of — favors owed, doors that opened for her that stayed shut for everyone else. I’d told myself, the way you tell yourself things you’d rather not examine too closely, that it was simply what came with being Luna, with holding a pack together for as long as she had. Watching her dismantle a stranger’s whole career in under two minutes with nothing but a folder of paper made that explanation feel thinner than it ever had before.

I set the pen down on the desk, careful, like the object itself might still be listening, and let myself think the thought all the way through for the first time. Whatever my aunt wanted from Athena, it wasn’t only protection. It was leverage. And I had just signed my name to a piece of paper that made me responsible for a girl I’d only known for two days, caught in the middle of whatever game my aunt was playing with pieces neither of us had fully named yet.

I found Mrs. Sophia in the hallway outside, alone now, staring at nothing in particular, the folder still clutched against her chest like she hadn’t decided yet whether to actually go through with any of it. She startled when she saw me, straightening fast.

“Miss Divine.” Her voice wavered, just slightly.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it more than the words probably conveyed. “Whatever she just did to you, I didn’t know about it.”

Something in her face softened, just a fraction, enough to tell me she believed me. “It’s not your fault,” she said quietly, though neither of us fully believed that either. “Just take care of that girl. Whatever else is going on here, she deserves that much.”

I promised her I would, and I meant it, even with everything I still didn’t understand pressing in around the edges of that promise.