Graham drew the edges of his coat tighter at the boundaries between glove and coat, collar and throat, in an only partially successful attempt to keep out the razor edge of the wind. Where the wind bit at every exposed inch of skin it could find, it was not the physical cold that held his attention then. The worlds beyond the doors stood outside whatever protection the Nexus afforded him, the feeling of cold sinking into the hollowed shell of his chest and outlining the shape of all he had lost. He had felt the sensation before and shied away from each door he did not stumble through to forget who he was for awhile, but where it otherwise would have been too reminiscent of the years he had served the Queen and brought him only pain, the numbness was something of a relief then.

"No," he said in reply, voice leveling out with the feeling of being something distant from himself. "I am not anywhere near it." As he looked at the other man he understood, as he had been unable to with eyes blinded by his own emotion, why Snow's prince might not have told him his fate. Why he and Ruby both had kept the approaching deadline of his death from him where he now saw that first meeting in the arboretum as painted thickly with it. "But this is better."