Lena's POV
The change did not arrive all at once. It arrived the way most true things had arrived in my life, quietly, in increments small enough that I almost mistook them for nothing.
I noticed it first in the mornings. I woke earlier than I used to, before the first bell, and instead of the muddled fog that usually took me an hour to shake, I woke clear. Alert in a way that had nothing to do with rest and everything to do with something underneath the rest, watching, already awake before I was.
I noticed it in my hands. They were steadier. Not that they had ever shaken visibly, I had spent too many years learning to keep them still for anyone to see the difference, but I could feel the steadiness now from the inside, the way you feel a held breath release even when no one watching wo
