❝ 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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a woodland savior
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MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF the goddess Aphrodite's favored youth—one of a beauty that rivaled her own—had lived long enough to see civilizations rise and fall. Adonis was a being of intrigue shrouded in a veil of great mystery, for how beautiful could one man be that he might find favor with the ancient goddess of love?
As mystified eyes gazed upon the resting form of a man surely carved from marble and gold by the hands of the Almighty himself, flesh blooming marigold in the risen sun, Aurora pondered in secret the possibility of mythology coming to life before her eyes, for this woodland stranger undoubtedly had to be an incarnation of sorts of the goddess's treasured youth. After all, surely no man—save for Adonis himself—could measure up to such an ancient, mythological beauty.
The dark stranger, whom Merlin swiftly introduced as his savior Lancelot in the midst of chaos, replicated that ancient allure; it was something not even the crimson of blood nor the feverish sheen dusting his honey-bronze flush could hide, and she had taken immediate notice to it. A man of beauty and an even greater honor, she gathered upon hearing how he risked his own life to save Merlin from a creature the depths of hell itself would scorn.
By a stroke of luck, the wound he sustained was superficial and easily treated with a physician's healing touch, but it was the fever birthed from the injury that could've turned the tides of his fate into a grave one. Had he not been rushed to Camelot on Merlin's behalf and left without proper treatment, Lancelot certainly would have succumbed to the fever upon the forest floor, but Gaius's talents worked to reverse that possibility. While remnants of the fever likely remained, the worst of it had passed and he would live to see another day.
Droplets of water raining back into the freshly filled bucket at her side blended well with birdsong as she wrung out the cloth, keeping it damp enough to dab away at the last of the sheen upon his brow. Aurora's touches were light as a feather, the caress of winter's first snowfall, as a means not to rouse him from the slumber he so desperately needed, but as it turned out, Lancelot was a man who rose with the sun and no wound could sway him from that. Taking in a breath of life, Adonis incarnate stirred beneath her touch and she momentarily froze.
