The ice has melted and the Brucolac doesn't feel better for it. Rain slips down the windows of the new-completed spire, muddying the view of the night outside into streaks of orange and purple-black. His neck aches and his eyes sting, and he worries, even though there's nothing to worry about now. He worries about having nothing to worry about. His brain clenches about the nothingness. Shakes it like a dog with a rabbit in its mouth. His stomach feels jolted, like he's lost his centre of gravity, and he's never not hungry but he's never not slightly nauseated. He's not sure what it means, or what he might do because of it.

But there's work to be done, and this exhausted, teeth-tight nervous terror is no excuse; nor does he want it to be. The work makes him feel better. Each ticked box is a relief and a defiance.

"Come in," he says, before Paloma knocks, catching her scent and isolating the familiar creak of her footstep outside. He leans back, sighs, and arranges his face into neutral attentiveness, though his skin has a faint grey-greenish pallor to it, and on his desk the fingers of his left hand drum and twitch.