seen before. Then she thought of absolutely nothing while she blew out her hair, then put in a few well-placed curls, until the woman who looked back at her from the mirror was actually...her again.
“Me,” she whispered out loud.
Her chest felt so tight it hurt to breathe, but she made herself do it anyway—long and deep—trying to keep that knotted thing below her breastbone at bay.
Anya got up then, snuggling deeper into the lush embrace of the robe. Now that she was so clean she was pickled, she let herself explore. She enjoyed her bare feet against the cool stone floors, or sunk deep into the thick rugs. She wandered the halls, going in and out of each of the bright rooms, then out onto the wide terrace so she could stand beneath the sky.
She hadn’t invited any staff inside, because that felt too much like more guards. Instead, she wandered around all on her own, as thrilled with the fact she was alone as anything else. All alone. No one was watching her. No one was listening to her. It amazed her how much she’d missed the simple freedom of walking through a room unobserved.
Through all the rooms. A media center with screens of all descriptions. There was that brightly colored room she’d sat in with Tarek, and three other salons, one for every mood or hint of weather. She had her own little courtyard, filled with flowers, plants, and a fountain that spilled into a pretty pool. There was a fully outfitted gym, two different office spaces, each with a different view, and a small library.
There was also a selection of bedchambers. Anya went into each, testing the softness of the mattresses and sitting in the chairs or lounging on the chaises, because she could. And because it made her feel like Goldilocks. But she knew the moment she entered the master suite. There was the foyer of mosaic. The art on the walls.
In the bedchamber itself, she found a glorious, four-poster bed that could sleep ten, which made her feel emotional all over again.
And laid out on top of the brightly colored bed linens, a rugged-looking canvas bag that she stared at as if it was a ghost.
Because it was. The last time Anya had seen it, the police had taken it from her.
Suddenly trembling, she moved to the end of the bed, staring at her bag as if she thought it might...explode. Or she might. And then, making strange noises as if her body couldn’t decide if she was breathing or sobbing, she pulled her bag toward her. Beneath it she found the jeans, T-shirt, and overtunic she’d been wearing that night. The scarf she’d had wrapped around her head. And inside the bag, her personal medical kit, her passport, and her mobile.
Charged, she saw when she switched it on. Anya stayed frozen where she was, staring at the phone in her hand and the now unfamiliar weight of it. Her voice mailbox was full. There were thousands of emails waiting. Notifications from apps she’d all but forgotten about.
The outside world in a tiny little box in her palm. And after all this time—all the days and nights she’d made long and complicated lists of all the people she would contact first, all the calls she would make, all the messages she would send—what she did was drop the mobile back down onto the bed.
And then back away as if it was a snake.
Her heart began to race. Nausea bloomed, then worked its way through her. Her breath picked up, and then the panic slammed straight into her.
It didn’t matter what she told herself. It never had mattered. Anya sank down onto her knees and then, when that wasn’t sufficiently low enough, collapsed onto her belly. And as it had so many times before, the panic took control.
“You are not dying,” she chanted at herself. “It only feels like it.”
Her heart pounded so hard, so loud, it seemed impossible to her that she wasn’t having a major cardiac event. She ordered herself to stop hyperventilating, because the doctor in her knew that made it worse, but that didn’t work. It never worked.
Anya cried then, soundless, shaking sobs. Because it felt like she was dying, and she couldn’t bear it—not when she’d only just escaped that dungeon.
But she knew that there was no fighting these panic attacks when they came. That was the horror of them. There was only surrendering, and she had never been any good