Chapter 35: Aspen, Part 1

Stregoni was used to being woken up in all sorts of ways - screams, pounding upon his door, his mother shaking him hard. Every crude way of waking a person had been inflicted upon him for as long as he could remember. 

What he couldn't remember was being woken gently. The closest he got was waking up groggily on his own, usually to the clatter and racket of the houses around him as people prepared for their day and servants ran about doing chores. 

Usually, he was slow to wake, despite - or maybe because of - the rough ways in which he was always woken. 

What had woken him this time, though?

Not the sunlight, though that was enough to make him feel horrendously guilty - he was always up with the sun, if not well before. He could not remember the last time he had slept in so late, minus those occasions where he was still awake when the sun rose.