Nina blinked, the heavy fog of sleep slowly lifting from her brain. She stretched out her arms, her fingers sinking into crisp, ridiculously high-thread-count cotton sheets that definitely did not belong to her lumpy apartment mattress.
The air smelled different too… faintly of cedarwood, expensive cologne, and clean rain. It was a smell that made her chest loosen in a way she couldn't quite explain, something steadying beneath the confusion.
What is going on? she thought, her mind spinning gears in slow motion.
She squinted her eyes open, the bright, natural light from a massive floor-to-ceiling window making her wince. She shifted her head, looking at the dark velvet drapes and the sprawling, minimalist architecture of the room. Everything here felt deliberate, expensive, untouched by the chaos of ordinary living… nothing at all like the world she knew.
"Where am I?" she muttered under her breath, her voice raspy from sleep.
