Nova's POV
She woke up because the bed was too soft.
Not a gentle waking a sharp, disoriented lurch upright, heart already going fast, hands already reaching for something that wasn't there. In the servants' quarters she'd slept on a narrow cot with a wool blanket and a pillow that had lost most of its stuffing somewhere in the third year, and she'd learned to wake at the first sound because the first sound was usually something she needed to respond to.
Here, there was no first sound.
Here, there was silence of a quality she had never experienced the thick, insulated silence of a room with actual curtains and an actual door and walls thick enough to hold the world at a distance.
She sat in the middle of an enormous bed in an enormous room and breathed, and let her heart slow down, and looked at the ceiling.
It was painted.
