She could barely breathe.

The velvet blindfold across her eyes made everything worse, every breath, every murmur, every shift of footsteps on the floorboards. Her wrists were bound in satin cords, delicate-looking but deceptively strong, like the vampires who'd brought her here. She’d been bathed, dressed in a gauzy white slip that clung to her like a second skin, and forced barefoot onto a raised platform under golden chandeliers.