Chapter 194

The alarm goes off at six and Elias is already awake.

He lies there for a moment listening to it, then reaches over and turns it off, and then lies there for another moment while the habit of the morning reassembles itself in his body.

His eyes open to the familiar crack in the ceiling of his old apartment, and for a moment everything feels normal. Then the weight of the last few weeks crashes down on him. No uniform hanging on the chair. No early bus to catch. No Lucia waiting at the end of the hallway with that flirty look she gives him when no one’s looking.

He was expelled yesterday and for the first time in a while, his life holds no purpose.

He sits up slowly, careful of the healing wound in his chest, swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, moving through the small space on autopilot.

His mother’s door is still shut. She sleeps late on the days after her bad nights, and last night was a bad night, he heard her through the wall at