Chapter 36: The Weight of Real
Jaden woke up on Friday without an alarm.
For a moment he lay still in the grey morning light of his bedroom at the Sterling estate and did what he had been doing every morning for the past two weeks — counted. But this time the number was not a countdown to something threatening. It was a countdown to something that had already been decided.
One day.
He got up and went to the window. The city below was doing its early morning thing — the first light moving across the rooftops, the distant geometry of the Old District visible on the far side of the city, the gap between here and there that he had been crossing in secret for three years and would stop crossing in secret after tomorrow.
He turned away from the window and opened his wardrobe.
He did not reach for the school uniform.
