[ WP ] `` As for the prisoner ... ''

King Garot was pacing back and forth, tugging on the grayed strands of his long, flowing beard when the physician entered the room, closing the door behind him. The King was about to speak when he caught sight of the doctor's dour face. The way his gaze dared not stray from the floor to meet the King's told the monarch all he needed to know. All he wanted to know. 
 
 `` Thank you,'' Said the king as his worry gave way to despondency. The doctor took his leave, and the king took a deep breath. His lips trembled to a smile before he opened the door to his daughter's room. `` Sweetheart, do you feel any better?'' He asked, taking her frail hands into his. The very ends of her fingertips chilled his skin like ice, and when he placed his palm upon her forehead the fever burned like a stovetop. No reply came from the girl whose only noise were the frail wheezing of her breaths. 
 
 The King had sent all his trusted advisers out in search of a cure for the princess's ailment, and throughout all the lands far and near, no learned man nor sage mystic could fathom the ailment that had befallen the King's daughter. Now as his daughter could not even lift a finger out of fatigue,
