The ceiling was white... an immense pale expanse of it, unhurried and indifferent, the very colour of clinical absolution, broken only by recessed lighting that dimmed itself by half the instant his eyes opened.
The suite's system registered his waking and answered with the quiet courtesy of a thing trained to be discreet, as though even the fixtures had been briefed on the delicacy of dragons returning from the abyss.
His body lay heavy on silk, carefully positioned. Someone had tended him here, rolling him into this exact posture and adjusting him over the slow crawl of hours, keeping him comfortable while he was elsewhere.
'How charming. The unmarked conqueror of souls, reduced to a porcelain doll in my own bed. The universe and its little jokes.'
Then he felt a small warm weight on his right hand.
He turned his head.
