❝ The future was yet to be written, uncertain in every way except one: there will be fire.
When the dawn closed her eyes, she awoke in flames-a hellfire inferno burning as leaves on briar-thicket trees. A forest of thorns alight. A vision of the fut...
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her touch stunned
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DEEPLY BRONZED SKIN HAD been reduced to ashen thistle throughout his comatose and feverish state, one in which poor Sir Ewan had been trapped under much longer than expected. Many a time had the court physician first-handedly dealt with a competitor rendered unconscious on the field, more often than not from a blow to the head or a fall from a horse's back, but none had remained asleep for as many hours as he. No voices could rouse him, not a single touch could stimulate him, but he was still declared among the living. It was a curious thing and Gaius had spent the entirety of the afternoon searching for the cause.
The room was silent as night, but he wasn't alone. His ward and his apprentice lingered like ghosts in the shadows, awaiting any news of the wounded knight with bated breath from the moment Gaius informed them of his suspicions. Once he suggested there being more to Ewan's condition than a duel gone awry, he couldn't get the youths with piqued worries and curiosities to vacate. The trio sought answers to their questions in the man's vitals, his reactions to stimuli and his superficial appearance—it was only a matter of time before the physician would find what they were searching for.
Hidden beneath the shadow of his firm jaw, almost small enough to be unseen by the untrained eye entirely, Gaius took notice of two puncture marks; it was a wound he could name with ease, but never before had he seen it render such effects. The physician beckoned them forth and forward they sprung like lightning. "Look at this. Do you see these two small wounds? Aurora, I'm afraid you're not going to like this, but it appears to be a snake bite."
"A snake bite? Are you certain?" A troubled Merlin inquired. His eyes never once picked up on the sight of shifting earth, no sign of such a creature in the midst of their duel. "How could he have been bitten by a snake? He was injured in a sword fight. All of Camelot saw it."
"The symptoms are consistent with poisoning," Gaius insisted, "slow pulse, fever, paralysis..."
Merlin's brows furrowed together as he examined the fallen warrior from afar. "Can you heal him?"
