Jerusalem, in the late hours, is a city of whispering stone. When the torches gutter in the corridors and the incense softens into a pale blue haze, I often find myself listening for sounds only the dying hear. The crackle of my candle. The chapel bells in the distance. My own breath, cold beneath the mask, fogging the silver very faintly, as though even my lungs struggle to remain in this world.

It is at such an hour that I think of her— the young French noblewoman who arrived in Sibylla’s train with eyes like winter dawn and the measured grace of one raised to curtsy before princes.

I should not think of her as often as I do. But then, a king who is dying may permit himself certain indulgences of the soul.

She came to Jerusalem to serve my sister, but it was I who found in her something rare: a mind that did not recoil from mine, a voice that did not falter before my mask, a presence that eased the constant ache of being both sovereign and specter.

She knocks softly when she visits me, though by now she knows permission is unnecessary. Some evenings she enters without ceremony, carrying a book of psalms or poetry; other nights she brings nothing but her quiet breath and an unguarded smile—the kind a man like me has no right to receive, and yet I take it as though it might warm the marrow my illness has left hollow.

I never remove my mask before her. And still, she looks at me as though she sees the man, not the metal.

When she sits across from me at the chessboard in my private chambers, she leans forward—elbows resting lightly on the table, chin lifted with curiosity—not fear. The lamplight draws small gold fires in her hair, and her eyes track my gloved hands as though she is memorizing their every motion, fragile and stiff as they are.

“You will lose tonight,” she once told me with gentle confidence.

A boldness I should quell, perhaps. Yet instead, I laughed—an unfamiliar sound in my own ears, sharp and warm as wine.

“You mistake my silence for uncertainty,” I replied. “It is strategy.”

“Then your strategy is slow,” she answered, “but rather beautiful.”

Beautiful. No one has ever used that word for anything belonging to me.

In another world—one with a body that obeyed me, with skin unmarked and hands steady—I might have reached for her then. But I did not. I cannot. A leper king does not dream of touching beauty.

Yet she sits closer with each visit.

She reads aloud when my eyes ache or the fever clouds my vision, her voice a low, lyrical thing that moves through my chambers like a prayer given shape. In French, in Latin, even in hesitant Arabic—her accent is soft, but her effort endears her to me more than she knows. When she falters, I correct her gently, and her quiet laugh trembles like a promise.

Other times, I read to her. My voice sounds strange to me—it always has since the disease took root deep in my face—yet she listens with unfeigned attentiveness. She asks questions. She debates. She challenges me in ways my council dares not.

In those moments, I feel less a relic on a throne and more a man. A brother. A scholar. Perhaps—if God permitted me a cruel fantasy—even a husband.

But God has denied me such things. I remind myself each night as she rises to leave.

Still… she lingers by the door, fingers tracing the carved stone as though reluctant to depart. Sometimes she looks back at me, and though the silver mask hides everything, I swear she sees the man beneath it—the broken, yearning, fevered creature who rules Jerusalem with hands that can no longer feel the pieces on a chessboard.

She is, I think, the closest I will ever come to having a wife.

Not in body—God preserve her from that sorrow—but in the gentler bond of minds that meet in equal measure. She does not treat me as something holy nor something monstrous. She treats me as though I am simply Baldwin.

I gesture with a gloved hand for her to come closer. Closer still. Closer than any courtier has ever dared.

“Stay,” I murmur.

It is the only command I have ever given that carries the weight of a prayer.