The months have preserved the mess the guards made that day, breaking open her trunks to prepare the traitor to be dragged away. It's as though nothing has happened in the time in-between, and it's almost true: her perfume still lingers, here. Guy finds it tucked into the folds of her clothes, in the scattered spaces of her chamber, as a buried treasure: the faint trace of sandalwood, going slightly sour. He'd bought it in Jerusalem, the first time he was sent to the Holy Lands. He'd given her it as a courting gift, begging her to stay.
Locked in a basement in Acre, she couldn't run away. Guy brought the outside world in for her - dresses, combs, jewelry, and perfumes – to make her happy, to make her love him. Once he brought her an orange, to put the sun in her hands, but she'd only looked away into the darkness and the corners, her chained hands folded in her lap, impervious to touch. Already a ghost. If he had touched her, she would have wasted away, water shimmering in the light.
There's no resistance now though, not as there was then – there's no slap of the hand or angry eyes when he reaches for her dress. There's no chance that she'll melt away. He can bury his senses in the left-behinds of the woman he would never - now - be able to marry. Her riding jacket hangs pink in the sunlight, dripping over the lip of a trunk; the months of exposure have bled out its flush. He blinks, taking it in. When he drags on the sleeve, the back of his neck prickles with heat. His eyes slip closed, and he kisses the end of the fabric as though it were the start of a hand. Then, he waits, as the faint echo of her body seeps into the deep, endless air.