I have never been to so many different places or seen so many people in one day. The security guards from Lilly’s building came out when they heard the gunshot, and then the real police came. They asked us what happened; they tried to ask us where Marissa went, but no one could answer. They put us in ambulances and brought us to a hospital. Ava refused to go in, she kept rubbing her elbow where the bruises were fading, and didn’t let anyone touch her. The rest of us saw a doctor and then they brought us to the police station. This time Ava was the only one who went in; Abigala had her hand on my arm the entire time and Penny had his on Bayan’s, who stared blankly at the floor and did not answer if anyone tried to talk to him.

And then they brought us home. Nua met us at the door and asked why there were police officers with us and where Miss Lilly was and I don’t remember what we said or who said it but he just stared at us for a long time, and then came with us upstairs. Now he and I and Ava and Penny and Bayan and Abigala are all sitting in the second floor living room, and no one speaks. There are people in Miss Lilly’s office next door, they are people from the agencies department and the police office who are looking through her things, they asked Ava if it was okay and she just nodded blankly, and then suddenly I say softly, “What did she say to you?

Ava looks up at me. But I’m looking at Bayan, whose face like usual is expressionless. He stares at me a moment, and then finally says quietly, “Take care of the children.”

Penny scoffs, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, and then leans back so he’s lying down on the couch. “Fuck.”

“Miss LeGatte,” says someone from the door, and I jump. Ava just looks at her, it is one of the women who have been poking around the office, and she jerks her head out to the hallway. “Can I see you?”

Ava licks her lips, and then sighs and stands. Before she goes, though, she turns back to us. “We should go to bed. All of you.”

No one answers, and she sighs again. “I don’t know how long this will take, but. Just. Let’s go to bed.”

She leaves. No one moves for a moment. Penny bites his knuckle. Bayan leans over and then lies down on top of him and puts his head on his shoulder and closes his eyes, and then Nua stands.

I look up at him. He holds his hand out for me. “Come on. It’s eleven o’clock.”

Is it? I haven’t been keeping track of time all day today. It was noon. That’s the last thing I remember. It was lunchtime.

I stand. I look at Penny. He just shakes his head slightly and gestures for us to go, and then wraps his arm around Bayan; Bayan does not move or speak or open his eyes. I look at Nua, and take his hand, and Abigala stands too. The three of us go upstairs. I turn to her when we reach the hallway, but she just goes down to her room, my room, and closes the door behind her.

“Come on,” says Nua again, softly. He touches my hand. I grab onto it. I need him right now. I want him and Ava. I want Keol.

“What’s going to happen?” I ask Nua when he comes into bed next to me. “What’s going to happen with the agencies and my parents and Shan?”

“I don’t know,” he answers softly. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” I murmur. “I’ve never seen anyone die.”

“Yeah,” whispers Nua, and he puts his head on my shoulder. I put my hand on his head, and then I say, “Nua, Lilly is dead.”

He does not say anything. I don’t know what else to do.

We lie there, for a while, I am staring at the ceiling and he closes his eyes, but he does not sleep. I don’t know how long it is until Ava comes upstairs, but it must be close to midnight now. It was noon, when we went down to get lunch with her mother, but now she comes back to us at midnight, and she goes into the bathroom and then into her closet and then she comes up to us. She crawls onto her bed, and Nua opens his eyes and sits up when he feels it, and Ava comes and wiggles in between us where she usually goes and leans back against the pillows and presses her hands into her eyes. “Okay.”

I look at Nua; he does not say anything.

“Penny and Bayan are still in the living room, Sloan is in your old room, and Abigala is in Keol’s.”

“What about the people?” I ask softly, and she shakes her head. “They got what they were looking for, some of them were people who worked for her so they were looking for her papers and stuff, god, I don’t know, Abigala would probably know.”

“Hey,” murmurs Nua, and she shakes her head and rubs her face. “They want me to do it.”

“Do what?” asks Nua, and she takes a deep breath, and says, “Run the agencies.”

“What?” I say after a moment, and she shakes her head again. “I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s what my mother wanted, you know, once she…I mean, she thought she was going to retire, but she wanted me to take her job, but I didn’t do that kind of work, I was working with the finances before, and then she couldn’t get me to want to do it so that’s why she went looking for Abigala instead, Abigala should be doing it, no, someone much higher up in the entire government should be doing it, but they want me to do it because I’m her daughter, they want me to take over running the agencies.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Ava,” says Nua.

“I am twenty years old,” she says, looking at him with wide eyes. “I should not be the head of a national gubernatorial agency.”

“Ava.”

“But if I don’t do it, they’ll find someone else. And that person could be just as bad as or worse than my mother.”

“Hey,” says Nua softly, putting his hand on her cheek. She looks at him, taking a shuddering breath, and then she looks at me. I don’t know what to do, to say, I’m younger than both of them, I don’t know what she should do. “What would you have to do?”

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “Whatever my mother did. Make sure they’re running smoothly and that the funds are, are, correctly distributed and that no one’s…breaking any rules.”

“Is that what your mother did?” asks Nua, and she smiles a little bit, closing her eyes. “I mean, allegedly. She did find some agencies that were selling boys for extra funds. She really rose through the ranks because everyone was happy that she exposed that, but they didn’t care that she was one of the people who had bought from them.”

That’s how Bayan got here, I know, he told me calmly and quietly when I first asked him months ago where he came from and he answered simply that Miss Lilly bought him; I have never really made that connection before, though, that Bayan got Lilly her job.

“It’s the money, that they’re worried about, it’s not the boys. They didn’t want to keep paying that agency more than they had to. They were glad that Lilly found out they were cheating the system, not that she found out they were abusing them.”

“But you,” I say softly. “You could actually do something about it.”

“I could,” she says softly. “The thing that Penny and I and all of us have been trying to do for so long. I could at least start.”

I smile a little, and so does Nua. She exhales, leaning her head back, and says, “I could annul his wedding.”

“Could you?” I ask in slight surprise, and she shrugs. “I don’t know. I could try, or at least find someone to, someone who could. And Sloan’s.”

“That would be good,” murmurs Nua.

“And we can annul too, if you want.”

I blink, and Nua looks up at her, and then props himself up on his elbow. “What? Why would we do that?”

“Because you never wanted to marry me in the first place.”

“Yeah, but,” I say, and Ava looks at me, and smiles a little. “Boys.”

“What would we do?” asks Nua. “Where would we go?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’d stay here,” I say. “Nowhere else to go, right? And we’d just sleep in here every night and eat at your table and help you with your work and do everything like we do now, so it won’t make a difference.”

Ava laughs a little again, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Look, boys, you’re stuck with me, you know that, right?”

“It’s not stuck if you choose it,” says Nua quietly, and she laughs slightly. “Yes, it is. You realize you can’t leave me, ever, right? You realize that if you do, and they find you, they’ll…I don’t even know what would happen.”

“Okay,” says Nua, unperturbed. “So let’s focus on getting boys who don’t actually like their wives out of their marriage.”

“And what happens when you turn into one of those boys?” asks Ava, looking at him. “What happens if I have to ask you to do something you don’t want to, or if I have to tell you no to something you want, and you have to get into bed with me that night anyway, and be angry at me until it stirs up into hate, and you want to leave, but you can’t?”

Nua stares at her, and I feel my heart drop. She believes this. “Ava,” I say quietly. “We’re not going to hate you.”

“You’re eighteen,” she says softly, her voice breaking slightly as she reaches up to stroke a piece of hair back away from my face. “You shouldn’t be married. You’re eighteen.”

“There are boys younger than that,” I say quietly, “who are stuck. Really stuck.”

Ava squeezes her eyes shut, a tear trickling down her cheek. Nua puts his hand on her shoulder, and then pulls her into him. “It’s bad the way it happened. But we’re lucky we got each other. A lot of people aren’t so lucky.”

She sobs, turning her head, burying it in his shoulder, and I look at Nua. He smiles slightly, pressing his lips to the top of her head, and I put my hand on her shoulder too. “Hey. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

She makes a noise. Nua smiles a little, and then moves the blankets with his feet. “Come on. Come on.”

She sniffles, wiping her nose, and then wiggles down next to him. She lies on her back, so she can see both of us on either side of her, and looks between us. “I love you both.”

“We love you,” murmurs Nua, and then looks at me, and I nod. She smiles again, and takes another deep breath, and squeezes her eyes shut, and she whispers, “I don’t know what to do.”

“You don’t have to do anything right now,” says Nua softly. “You can’t. Ava, go to sleep.”

“Go to sleep,” she repeats through a laugh, but she does not sound amused, and Nua smiles a little too, putting his hand on her head. “Ava.”

She opens her eyes, she looks up at him, and she whispers, “My mother is dead.”

“I know,” says Nua softly. I pull the blankets up, over my head, and then after a moment Nua takes them off again. “Guys. There’s nothing else we can do right now. Both of you need to sleep.”

Ava makes a noise and rolls over and puts her head against Nua’s shoulder. He smiles a little again, and lies down so she can lie on him. He looks over at me, too, and I go to him, and I wrap my arm around Ava and put my hand on Nua’s stomach and I shiver. Nua puts the blanket over me again, and Ava sighs, closing her eyes. “My mother is dead.”

Nua does not say anything. She does not want us to say anything. Nua is right, she needs to sleep, she just wants to sleep. So we sleep.