The morning air in Cherion's bedroom didn't just feel cold, it felt like a pointed insult. Cherion stood shivering in front of his wardrobe. He'd lived through some rough Monday mornings in his previous life, the kind where you wake up five minutes before your shift and miss subways, but this was a whole new level of "not today."
"You have got to be kidding me," he muttered, yanking a charcoal-grey tunic from its peg.
He didn't even need to put it on to see the disaster. The left sleeve looked like it had been through a medieval woodchipper. A jagged, three-inch tear stared back at him, right at the shoulder seam. He tossed it onto the bed and grabbed another. This one, a fine Northern wool he'd actually liked, had shrunk so severely it wouldn't have fit a well-fed toddler, let alone a grown man.
"What is the laundry staff doing? Scrubbing these with volcanic rocks?"
