❝ 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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scream into the night
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IF NOT FOR FLESH and bone, Aurora Tyndale was certain her heart, mind and soul would be spinning amongst the stars above. Every thought seemed cursed to the shadows of the cosmos, and heaven knew she was drowning in them.
The creature—the griffin, as she recalled in the heat of chaos—was indeed one that could be felled only by the same magic whence it came; swords and spears would be of no use to the knights of Camelot this time, and it was a truth to which their king gave no credence. Uther Pendragon was a man of sinful pride and its power blinded him to many things, and the danger on the horizon was no exception; the lives of many indispensable brave-hearts hung in the balance, all because he refused to see things the way they were.
Morning's stillness truly was an omen, she had come to realize, and her beating heart bled to stone. The thought of Arthur—a mere mortal against a seemingly indestructible colossus—riding off into the starry night, he and his men facing the griffin in vain, was more than enough to cast that heart of stone to the bottom of the ocean.
But hope had not forsaken them yet. Still it lived and once more, though she wished otherwise the burden of salvation weighed down upon Merlin's shoulders alone.
Aurora didn't think it fair for one so young to bear the safety, security and destiny of a kingdom he did not lead; the crown and kingship were not tied to his name and yet here he was, leaping headfirst into every storm as if it were so. There wasn't a doubt in her mind that Camelot wholly owed life and limb to this sky-eyed farm boy—a sorcerer in a kingdom that could so easy become his grave, risking his life day by day for every one of them—and they didn't even know it.
Despite his self-deprecating lamentations and misgivings of his own worth, Aurora knew he would find a way—she believed in him far too much for even a wraith of doubt. She only wished he had that same steadfast faith in himself.
Though she feared not for Camelot, knowing its guardian angel would grant deliverance, she did fear for Lancelot.
It didn't take long for Aurora to discover the reason behind his absence at Arthur's side, to understand that her worst fears had been breathed to life—the nobleman semblance they worked to keep had been laid bare in the night, and when morning came, the broken dreamer had been cast away to the dungeons in shame (to think of him alone in those dark depths hollowed her heart), awaiting the inevitability of the king's ireful judgement.
