**Gaia's POV**

The knock on Astor's office door is soft but confident.

"Come in," Astor says, his tone warming immediately—a shift I notice because it's so different from the cold authority he uses with everyone else.

The woman who enters is striking. Tall, with dark hair pulled into an elegant knot, wearing travel clothes that somehow still look sophisticated. She's maybe in her late twenties, with the kind of classical beauty that comes from good breeding and ...