Chapter 39: Something From the Market
Saturday morning arrived with the particular quality of a weekend that had nothing required of it.
Jaden woke at seven — later than his usual six, which was itself a small revolution — and lay in the quiet of his bedroom at the Sterling estate listening to the house. Elena moving in the kitchen below. The distant sound of the city. The absence of any alarm, any training session, any countdown running in the back of his mind.
He had slept nine hours.
He couldn't remember the last time he had slept nine hours.
He got up and went to the window. The city below was doing its Saturday morning thing — slower than weekdays, the light softer, the traffic thinner. The Old District visible on the far side, its geometry familiar now in a way it hadn't been a year ago when it was just the part of the city the Sterling family's drivers navigated around rather than through.
He picked up his phone.
Jaden: What time?
