He’s facing away from the door as she comes in, sitting behind his desk and staring hard at the wall with all the power of his intense grey eyes. The surface of the desk is a mess, as always, covered in piles of flimsy and abandoned teacups. Atop one of those scraps, the one signed Dulcinea, his spectacles sit, abandoned.

Palamedes doesn’t turn around as the door opens—there is only one person it could be, after all. He doesn’t object to her offer of food, which is a little disconcerting all on its own, given his usual response to what he teasingly calls Camilla’s hovering. “The dinner,” he murmurs under his breath instead. With a voice that’s scratchy and raw, he tells her, “My apologies, I clean forgot."