The light was the first thing to betray the morning. Amara stirred, her consciousness bubbling up from a deep, thick layer of dreamless sleep that felt more like a healing stasis than mere rest. For a confused, heart-pounding second, she expected to feel the bite of zip-ties or the smell of damp concrete.
But there was no oil. No rust.
Instead, there was the scent of Egyptian cotton, expensive cedarwood, and a faint, lingering trace of ozone that she had come to associate exclusively with Darien Dravik.
She opened her eyes slowly, squinting against the brilliance of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The room was bathed in a honeyed glow, the kind of light that makes everything look a little too perfect to be real. She shifted, her body letting out a chorus of tiny, sharp protests. Her ribs were stiff, and her wrists throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache, but the bone-deep terror that had been her constant companion for the last twenty-four hours had... evaporated.
