[Emma's POV]
Consciousness came back not as a soft tide but as a cycle of savage, sensory jolts. A s***h of light from the high windows. The faraway, drumlike thunder of a motorbike speeding down the drive of the estate. The harsh rasp of my own breathing, sawing in and out of my chest. I opened my eyes, the world swimming into an agonizing clarity of bared wood beams and silk curtains. The mansion. My room.
The comforting smells of lemon oil and old money were mitigated by something alien sticking to my skin—the specter of rain, of engine grease, and the burning ache of smoke. I was safe. I said the words over and over like a mantra, a shabby armor against the awful wrongness seeping into the marrow of my bones.
My body was not mine. It was both weighty and weightless, as if mercury a
