𝐒𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐞
His eyes dropped to my exposed shoulder, and a flush raced up from my neck to my cheeks.
But his eyes drifted away like it was nothing. Then he pushed a button on his desk. A coolness washed over me so fast it should have been jarring, but it was not.
Mikhail became double, my body going slack in an instant before it all went black.
---
Cold.
That was my first conscious thought as I surfaced from sleep. It was not the gentle cool of air conditioning, but biting, vicious cold that seeped through my clothes and into my bones.
My second thought was: hard.
I was on rough stone that dug into my hip, my shoulder, my cheek. I shifted, and pain lanced through my already-injured hip.
My eyes flew open.
Weathered stone stretched beneath me. Above, a sky full of stars I didn't recognize was obscured partially by crumbling pillars that reached toward the heavens like skeletal fingers.
