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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 at that.
It felt like an eternity. Eventually, she managed to breathe better, slowing each breath and using her nose more than her mouth. Slowly, her heart beat less frantically.
Slowly, slowly, the clench of nausea dissipated.
But she still had to crawl across the floor on her hands and knees. Back into the bathroom, where she had to lie for a while on the cold marble floor. Just to make sure thatthis timeit really wasn’t the sudden onset of a horrible influenza.
As she lay there, staring balefully at the literally palatial toilet before her, it occurred to her that in all the months she’d been imprisoned, she’d never once had one of these attacks. If asked, Anya would have said that her whole life had taken place on a level of intense stress and fear. Especially before she’d begun to learn the language, and had been forced to exist in a swirl of uncomprehending terror.
Stress, fear, and terror, sure. But she hadn’t had one of these vicious little panic attacks, had she?
And in fact, it was only when she thought about the world contained on her mobile—and the inevitable messages she would find from her father—that her heart kicked at her again. And another queasy jolt hit her straight in the belly. She could feel her shoulders seem to tie themselves into dramatic shapes above her head, and apparently, it was here on the bathroom floor of a grand palace in Alzalam that Anya might just have to face the fact that it wasn’t her eight-month imprisonment that really stressed her out.
It was the life she’d put on hold while stuck in that cell.
“That’s ridiculous,” she muttered at herself as she pulled herself up and onto her feet, feeling brittle and significantly older than she had before.
When she staggered back out of the bathroom, she didn’t head for her bag again. Or her mobile, God forbid. She went instead through the far archway and found herself in an expansive dressing room, stocked full of clothing, just as the forbidding and beautiful Tarek had promised.
Anya told herself that she was erring on the side of caution. But she suspected it was more that she didn’t want to be alone any longer, stuck with nothing but her panic, too many voice mail messages she didn’t want to listen to, and the horror of her inbox.
Whatever it was, she went out and called in the servants.
“I am to have dinner with the Sheikh and the American ambassador,” she told the two women who waited for her, both of them smiling as if they’d waited their entire lives for this opportunity.
“Yes, madam,” one of them said. “Such an honor.”
