Stolen

Marlowe woke to silk sheets and the wrong ceiling.

For one long, disoriented breath she thought she was still dreaming, because nothing about the room made sense against the last thing she remembered. Stone walls stretched high above her, threaded with old wood beams that looked older than the country she'd grown up in. A fire cracked low in a hearth big enough to stand in. The bed beneath her was massive, soft in a way that felt obscene compared to the mattress she'd been sleeping on for the last three years, and none of it belonged to her.

She sat up so fast her head spun, and the memory slammed back into her all at once. The bar. The man with the gold eyes. His arms closing around her and the world tilting sideways until the darkness took everything else.

"Ronan," she said out loud, testing the name like it might explain what had happened to her.

The room didn't answer. She was alone, still dressed in the same clothes from the club, her robe gone somewhere between then and now. She swung her legs off the bed and forced herself upright, ignoring the way her body still hummed faintly, an echo of the warmth that had spread through her chest when he'd touched her wrist. She hated that her body remembered it fondly. She hated it more that some small, traitorous part of her wasn't afraid.

The rest of her was furious enough for both halves.

She crossed to the nearest window and shoved back heavy curtains, expecting city lights, expecting anything familiar. Instead she found forest, endless and dark, stretching toward mountains she didn't recognize under a sky with too many stars in it. No streetlights. No noise. No sign of the world she'd been dragged out of, and no sign of Priya, who by now had almost certainly called every hospital in the city looking for her.

The thought of Priya sent a fresh spike of panic through her chest, sharper than the fear for herself. Priya would call the club. The club would say she'd left with a customer. Priya would call the police, and the police would find nothing, because whatever had taken Marlowe out of that hallway hadn't left so much as a footprint behind for anyone to follow.

"No, no, no." She was already moving toward the door, adrenaline burning through the last of her grogginess. The handle turned easily under her hand, which surprised her enough that she paused. If he'd meant to cage her, he hadn't bothered locking the door. Maybe he didn't think he needed to.

That thought made her angrier than a locked door would have.

The hallway outside was as absurd as the bedroom, stone and tapestry and firelight, wide enough to drive a car through. She had no idea which direction led out, so she picked one and walked fast, arms wrapped around herself, painfully aware that she was barefoot in a place that felt like it belonged in another century.

She made it maybe thirty feet before a woman rounded the corner ahead of her and stopped short, eyes going wide.

"Oh." The woman was young, maybe Marlowe's age, dressed simply but well, dark hair braided back from a face that looked more startled than hostile. "You're awake. You're not supposed to be up yet, the king said you'd sleep until—"

"Where am I?" Marlowe cut in. "Where is this place?"

"I'm Serah." The woman's hands came up, placating, like she was talking someone off a ledge. "You're safe. This is the Blackwood territory, you're in the palace, and I promise no one here means you any harm."

"Someone kidnapped me out of my job last night. Forgive me if I don't take your word for it. I have a roommate who's probably already called the police. Do any of you understand what you've done to my life in the last twelve hours?"

Something flickered across Serah's face, sympathy maybe, or guilt, or both. "I know how it looks."

"Then help me leave."

"I can't do that," Serah said gently, but there was no give in it at all. "Please. Let me take you somewhere you can sit, get some food, and I'll answer whatever I'm allowed to answer. Running through the halls barefoot isn't going to get you home."

Marlowe's throat tightened around the word home, because home was a studio apartment with a broken radiator and rent due in nine days, a roommate who was probably out of her mind with worry right now, and she had no idea how she was supposed to get back to any of it. Panic and fury were tangled so close together in her chest that she couldn't tell which one was driving her voice when she spoke again.

"Then take me to him. Whoever's in charge of this circus. I want answers, and I want them now."

Serah hesitated, then nodded slowly, like she'd decided that was the safer of two bad options. "This way."

She led Marlowe down a staircase and through a set of doors carved with a wolf's head, into a hall lit by tall windows and a fire that dwarfed the one in the bedroom. Ronan was already there, standing near the hearth in dark clothes that made him look even less like the man from the bar and more like something out of a history book, some king carved in stone and given breath. He looked up the moment she entered, and whatever conversation he'd been having with the man beside him died instantly.

"Leave us," Ronan said, without looking away from her.

The man beside him, tall and broad-shouldered with an expression that suggested he found the whole situation more amusing than alarming, gave a short nod and a look at Marlowe that was almost sympathetic before he slipped out. Serah followed a beat behind him, throwing Marlowe one last glance before the doors shut and left her alone with the man who'd stolen her life out from under her.

"You look better rested," Ronan said.

"You drugged me."

"I carried you." His jaw tightened. "You were unconscious from the shock of the run, nothing more. I would never put something in your body without your consent."

"You put your hands on me without my consent. You dragged me across state lines, or continents, or whatever this is, without my consent." Her voice cracked on the last word, and she hated it, hated that fear was leaking through the anger no matter how hard she tried to keep it locked down. "And somewhere back there, I have a roommate who's probably lost her mind trying to find me. Does that matter to you at all, or was I never anything more than something you decided you wanted?"

Something shifted behind his eyes at that, the first real flicker of guilt she'd seen from him since she woke. "Tell me her name," he said quietly. "I'll see that she's told something. Enough to stop her searching, without putting her in danger by telling her the truth."

"Her name is Priya." Marlowe's voice shook despite her best effort to hold it steady. "And if anything happens to her because of this, because of you, I will never forgive you. Not ever."

Ronan was quiet for a long moment, something calculating moving behind his gold eyes that she couldn't read at all. "It will be handled today," he said finally. "You have my word."

It wasn't nearly enough. But it was, infuriatingly, the only thing he'd offered her yet that sounded like it might actually cost him something to keep.