We hope you slept well.”The voice was calm, assured, sibilant and not the rider’s. The lights, which had dimmed almost to blackness when the door had shut on her the night before, were now raised to a level where they penetrated almost painfully through her eyelids. She opened her eyes, squinting blearily at the surrounding room, ready to hit out blindly if the voice came too close.She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d wanted to keep awake, ready to meet any challenge. But the fatigue of the journey, the toll that the gas had taken on her body, had made her unable to resist the weariness that seeped through her bones. At some point, lulled by darkness, she had drifted off. A dreamless sleep, so deep that she wouldn’t have known if someone had crept in and chilled her. She hated to be so vulnerable at the best of times, let alone in a situation such as this.And the voice. It had seemed so close. She could have…Ah, there was no reason to worry about that now. If it had been her time, it would be too late for regrets by now.She sat up, shaking her head, using the seemingly half-awake, still-bleary motion to take a surreptitious look around.
