Two: Returned to Life
Dim starlight filtered through the break in the tapestry. The room beyond was dark and cold. A feminine figure in the bed slept on, unaware of the pain that plagued the man who stood staring out the window into the dark night.
He clenched and unclenched his hands, attempting to rid himself of the ever-present ache from the biting cold that had settled in his bones. He wondered sometimes if what he had experienced had been a dream, even though the nightmares that plagued him kept him from any sort of peaceful slumber.
Below the south-facing window, the courtyard was quiet. Braziers smoldered at the gates. He could see the shadowy figures of his guards huddled around them for warmth as they guarded the castle. Little did they know..the enemy was already within their walls.
Cold, blue eyes turned toward the bed. His beautiful wife slumbered peacefully. It was only a matter of days before he would find out the truth of her deception.
She had poisoned him and imprisoned his best friend in the dungeons. Even now, after the fact, he knew she was not to blame, but he had been warned that everything needed to play out as it had before until the very end.
He wasn't the same man he had been before. The fact that he already knew what was going to happen was testament to that. He had died, not from the poison, but from a wound taken from a young man he had trusted with a magical sword.
Unconsciously, his hand moved to the deep ache of the wound he had not yet sustained. It was just one of many nearly fatal blows that riddled his body. His mind, however, felt more scarred than his body. He knew what the future held, because he had lived this life before his death.
His last words had been to his best friend. A brother in so many ways. Words of gratitude for helping him build the great kingdom. Eyes clouded with pain had never set eyes upon the shores of Avalon, the place where he had been promised healing. He had made peace with himself and the man who had betrayed him...the same man who had saved him countless times over.
He never truly expected to go to heaven after all that he had done, but the hell he had been thrown into was beyond anything he could have imagined.
A muffled chuckle of disdain broke the silence and it took him a moment to realize that he had been the one to make the sound. His eyes darted quickly back to the bed. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when the queen did not stir.
His servant had disappeared into the night and he had watched him go. He had never found out why the dark-haired man had run off on that evening. Arthur only knew that he had returned with a limp and a young man who had ultimately saved them. Daegal had been the boy's name...or would be when the time came for the king to find out.
The first memory after his death had been a beautiful one, but the lush, verdant isle beyond the Gates of Avalon was quickly fading from his memory.