The ceiling was wrong.
That was the first thing I noticed—not the unfamiliar smell, not the unusual weight of the blankets across my body, not even the quality of light filtering from somewhere I hadn't yet identified.
The ceiling was wrong, and it told me immediately that I was not in my room.
I lay there for a few seconds, processing the implications with the same practiced calm that had carried me through far more alarming situations than an unfamiliar ceiling.
Either someone had kidnapped me, my maids went through the extraordinary trouble of furnishing a bedroom to near-luxurious standards while I slept, or I was dreaming again.
The bedroom itself was large and ornate in a way that suggested old money rather than new excess—heavy drapes over the windows, dark lacquered furniture with subtle gilded edges, a vanity against the far wall cluttered with small objects I couldn't identify from where I was lying.
There was nothing that was obviously sinister.
