Morgana returned to the garage the next morning to prepare for the upcoming mission against Baron Dresthorne, only to find a familiar figure waiting near the entrance — a royal envoy, standing awkwardly among the gang's motorcycles and scattered equipment, clearly out of place in this world of grease and gunmetal. The morning light filtering through the garage's high windows caught the silver embroidery on the envoy's robes, an incongruous shimmer against the oil-stained concrete floor and stacked crates of salvaged parts. It was a different envoy than the one who'd delivered the Summons Decree at Copperline — younger, she noted, with the particular nervous energy of someone new enough to royal service that field assignments still unsettled him. She wondered, briefly and uncharitably, what he'd been told about this assignment, what version of her the Council had painted for him before sending him out to find a runaway princess in the industrial slums of Ledgerhold.

"Your Highness." the envoy said, bowing low despite the unlikely surroundings, his voice carrying the particular formal cadence drilled into every member of the royal household staff from childhood. "I apologize for coming in person, but the Council insisted on a direct answer this time. Letters, it seems, are no longer considered sufficient."

She recognized the phrasing immediately — not the envoy's own words, but a script handed down from the Council of Elders themselves, the same bureaucratic insistence on formality that had characterized every interaction she'd had with the court since childhood. Even in crisis, even reaching across a divide as wide as the one separating the palace from this garage, the machinery of royal protocol ground on unchanged.

"How did you find this place?" Morgana asked sharply, glancing around to ensure none of her crew were within earshot, her hand instinctively moving to shield the conversation from view, positioning her body to block the envoy from the sightline of the main workbenches where Finn and two others were running diagnostics on a batch of recently acquired enchanted rifles.

"Your Highness, with respect, the royal household has resources beyond ordinary tracking." the envoy replied, his tone carefully neutral, neither confirming nor denying whether the method involved something as simple as bribed informants or something more invasive. "The Winter Ceremony is in six weeks." he continued, ignoring her question entirely, as though the deadline itself was the only answer that mattered. "The Council grows impatient. Your mother asks that I remind you personally — this cannot be postponed indefinitely. House Veyland has already begun quietly building support among the lesser nobles, preparing for the possibility that you will not return."

Morgana's jaw tightened, a cold weight settling in her stomach at the mention of House Veyland's growing influence. She'd heard whispers of Veyland's ambitions before, secondhand and fragmentary, but hearing it confirmed so plainly, delivered with the same flat formality the envoy used for every other piece of unwelcome news, made the threat feel suddenly, uncomfortably real. She thought of Lord Veyland's reputation — a man who'd never once, in her memory, extended courtesy to anyone outside his own bloodline, whose policy proposals during her time at court had consistently pushed toward harsher restrictions on the city's non-elven population. If he took the throne, the fragile network of trust she'd spent years building with orc clan leaders and dragon elders, entirely outside official channels, would collapse within months. "Tell them I've received the message. Again."

The envoy hesitated, clearly wanting to press further, perhaps sensing the deeper reluctance behind her clipped response, his eyes flickering briefly toward the garage's interior as though searching for some clue about the life she'd built here that might help him understand her refusal to return. "Your Highness, if I may—"

"You may not." Morgana cut him off, her voice sharper now, carrying an authority that briefly silenced whatever plea he'd been about to make. "You've delivered your message. I've acknowledged it. That concludes this visit."

The envoy bowed once more, the formal gesture carrying a weight of resignation now, and departed without further protest, leaving Morgana standing alone with the weight of six weeks pressing suddenly, uncomfortably close. She watched his retreating figure until he'd disappeared around the corner of the block, making certain he hadn't lingered to observe anything more about the garage than his initial approach had already revealed.

She had barely composed herself, smoothing the tension from her shoulders through sheer force of will, straightening the collar of her jacket as though the physical act of tidying herself might extend to tidying her thoughts as well, when Aiden's flying car arrived to collect her for the day's mission, its engine humming with the particular quiet efficiency of Bank-grade enchantment work, expensive enough that she doubted anyone in her crew had ever ridden in anything comparable. He stepped out, immediately noting the tension still lingering in her posture despite her best efforts to mask it, though he said nothing yet, some instinct telling him this wasn't the moment to press.

"Ready?" he asked simply, his eyes lingering on her a beat longer than the question strictly required, as though searching for permission to ask something more.

"Ready." she replied, forcing her usual composure back into place, tucking the unspoken weight of the Council's deadline deep beneath the surface where she'd hidden it many times before, a skill honed over years of practice long before she'd ever met him. She climbed into the flying car without further comment, settling into the passenger seat with the deliberate calm of someone determined not to let anything crack the surface today.

As they drove toward Baron Dresthorne's estate, Morgana kept her eyes fixed on the passing city, unwilling to let Aiden see anything beyond the calm, capable partner he'd come to know. The streets of Ledgerhold blurred past outside the window — the gleaming towers of the financial district giving way gradually to the more modest architecture of the residential quarters, and beyond that, the beginnings of the wealthy estates that ringed the city's northern edge, where men like Dresthorne kept their fortunes hidden behind high walls and private security. She watched the transition of neighborhoods with the practiced eye of someone who had learned Ledgerhold's geography of wealth and poverty as thoroughly as any Bank auditor, cataloging automatically which streets belonged to which tax bracket, which alleys offered escape routes and which ended in dead-end walls too high to scale quickly.

Aiden drove in silence for a while, occasionally glancing at a data slate mounted on the dashboard displaying the latest surveillance updates on Dresthorne's estate, the mundane routine of mission preparation providing a welcome distraction from whatever question still lingered unspoken between them. Morgana found herself grateful for his restraint, even as some contradictory part of her almost wished he would simply ask directly, forcing the issue into the open where she might, finally, have no choice but to answer.

She wasn't ready — not yet — to explain the crown waiting for her back home, the throne she'd fled, the family she'd left behind, or the six weeks now ticking down toward a decision she still couldn't bring herself to make. Every time she considered telling him, the words seemed to catch somewhere behind her ribs, tangled up with old instincts about the danger of revealing too much to anyone who might use the knowledge against her, even someone she'd come, against her better judgment, to trust as much as she trusted Aiden. She'd learned that lesson early and hard, in a court where every confidence eventually became currency, traded and leveraged by people who'd smiled at her with the same warmth Aiden now offered.

Some part of her feared that if he knew the full truth of who she really was, everything between them might shift in ways she couldn't predict, and wasn't ready to risk — not this fragile, unfamiliar partnership that had somehow, in the space of just over a week, become something she found herself unexpectedly reluctant to lose. She thought of how he'd looked at her during their negotiation sessions, the quiet respect he'd shown for her expertise, the careful way he'd revised contract language the moment she pointed out a flaw. Would any of that survive learning she was, in the eyes of an entire kingdom, still technically a princess with a throne waiting to be claimed?

She suspected, uncomfortably, that it might not — not because Aiden seemed the type to be dazzled or repelled by royal titles specifically, but because the revelation would inevitably raise questions about everything else she'd been careful not to share. Why had she left? What exactly had she fled from, and why did the throne still pursue her so relentlessly if she'd truly wanted nothing more to do with it? Each question led to another, deeper layer of vulnerability she wasn't prepared to expose, not yet, not while their partnership still felt as new and untested as it did. And beneath all of it lay a fear she rarely let herself examine directly: that if Aiden learned the truth, he might start treating her the way everyone at court always had — as a title first, a person second, her worth measured against a birthright she'd never asked for and had spent four years actively rejecting.

For now, it was easier to carry the weight alone, as she always had. She'd built her entire adult identity around the principle of self-sufficiency, around proving — to the Council, to her mother, to herself most of all — that she didn't need the crown or the throne or any of the trappings of the life she'd been born into in order to matter, in order to do good in the world. Admitting to Aiden that a piece of that old life still had claws deep enough in her to summon royal envoys directly to her hideout felt, in some deep and uncomfortable way, like admitting failure.

"You've gone quiet." Aiden observed after several minutes of silence, glancing at her briefly before returning his attention to navigating the car through the increasingly sparse traffic as they left the city center behind. His tone carried genuine concern rather than mere curiosity, the same careful attentiveness she'd noticed in him during their very first negotiation, when he'd caught every flicker of hesitation crossing her face across the diner table.

"Just thinking through the mission." she said, the lie coming more easily than she expected, though something in her tone must have carried an edge, because Aiden's eyes flickered toward her again, longer this time, clearly unconvinced but apparently deciding, for now, not to press the matter.

"We have time before we reach the estate, if you want to talk through anything." he offered, his voice carefully neutral, leaving the door open without forcing her through it.

"I'm fine." she said, perhaps too quickly, the words coming out sharper than she intended. She caught herself, softening her tone with visible effort. "Really. Just focused."

Aiden nodded, accepting the answer at face value, or at least pretending to, and the rest of the drive continued in a silence that felt, to Morgana, subtly different from their usual comfortable quiet — charged now with something unspoken, a question hovering in the space between them that neither of them chose to voice directly.

She thought, watching the passing scenery, about how strange it was that a man she'd known for barely two weeks had already become someone whose good opinion she cared about preserving, someone whose potential reaction to her hidden truth felt significant enough to warrant this careful, deliberate silence. Four years of building walls around herself, and here she was, worrying about how a Bank Chief with kind eyes and careful hands might react to learning she was born a princess.

The estate came into view eventually, its high walls and manicured grounds a stark contrast to the working-class garage she called home, and Morgana felt a strange, unwelcome sense of familiarity at the sight of it — the particular architecture of wealth and power that had once been her own daily environment, before she'd chosen a different life entirely. The topiary hedges, trimmed into precise geometric shapes, reminded her uncomfortably of the palace gardens she'd once wandered as a child, before duty and expectation had transformed those same gardens into something closer to a gilded cage. She pushed the feeling down along with everything else, refusing to let old instincts about court etiquette and noble bearing resurface now, of all moments, when she needed every ounce of focus for the mission ahead.

"There it is." Aiden said, slowing the car as they approached a discreet parking spot several blocks from the main gate, chosen specifically to avoid drawing attention to their arrival. "Dresthorne's estate. Security reports suggest he's increased his personal guard significantly since we froze his assets."

"Wouldn't you, in his position?" Morgana replied, grateful for the shift back to operational matters, the familiar rhythm of mission planning settling something restless in her chest that the morning's encounter with the envoy had left unsettled.

"Fair point." Aiden conceded, parking the car and cutting the engine. He turned to look at her fully for the first time since they'd left the safehouse, his expression carrying a seriousness that suggested he hadn't entirely let go of his earlier concern, whatever its source. "Whatever's on your mind, Morgana — I hope you know you can tell me. Whenever you're ready. I'm not going anywhere." He paused, choosing his next words with visible care. "I'm not asking because I think it affects the mission. I'm asking because I've noticed you carry things alone even when you don't have to, and I'd like to think that's not always necessary anymore. Not with me, at least."

The simplicity of the offer, delivered without pressure or expectation, caught her off guard more than she wanted to admit. She looked at him for a long moment, weighing the impulse to finally say something true against the deeply ingrained instinct to keep her guard up, to protect the fragile new thing they'd built together from the complications her real identity would inevitably introduce. For one unguarded second, she nearly told him everything — the crown, the ceremony, the mother she rarely spoke to, the entire weight of a life she'd spent four years trying to outrun. The words gathered at the back of her throat, closer to spilling out than they'd ever come before.

But she didn't. The habit of years, of a lifetime spent learning that vulnerability was a currency others spent against you, held firm even now, even with a man who had never once, in their weeks of partnership, given her reason to expect betrayal. "I know." she said finally, which wasn't quite an answer, but was, in its own way, as much truth as she was ready to offer. "Let's focus on Dresthorne for now."

Aiden held her gaze a moment longer, something unreadable passing behind his eyes, before nodding and reaching for the door handle. "Dresthorne it is." His voice carried a note of gentle acceptance rather than disappointment, as though he'd expected exactly this answer and had made his peace with it before even asking the question, content to let the offer stand open for whenever she was ready to take it.

They exited the car together, falling into the familiar rhythm of pre-mission preparation, checking equipment and reviewing the approach one final time, the earlier tension not entirely resolved but folded away for now beneath the more immediate demands of the task ahead. Morgana ran through her mental checklist automatically — weapon, ammunition, the small kit of tools she carried for exactly this kind of infiltration — while a corner of her mind continued turning over the morning's encounter, weighing and reweighing the wisdom of her continued silence.

Aiden, for his part, cast one more glance at her as they approached the estate's outer perimeter, clearly still processing whatever he'd sensed brewing beneath her composed exterior. He didn't press further, true to his word, but she caught him watching her with a new kind of attention, as though cataloging small details he might need later to understand whatever she eventually chose to reveal.

Whatever conversation still waited between them — about crowns, about deadlines, about the six weeks steadily shrinking somewhere in the back of Morgana's mind — would have to wait for another night, another quiet moment neither of them could yet predict. For now, there was a dragon Baron's estate to infiltrate, security to circumvent, evidence to gather, and the familiar, grounding rhythm of a mission that asked nothing of her except skill and focus, two things she'd never once doubted her ability to provide.

Whatever weight she carried alone tonight, she resolved to set it fully aside for the next several hours. Baron Dresthorne's estate demanded her complete attention, and she intended to give it exactly that, leaving the crown, the Council, and the unresolved offer sitting patiently between her and Aiden for whatever quiet moment eventually forced the question into the open.

Six weeks remained, ticking steadily downward whether she acknowledged them or not, but for the length of this mission at least, they would have to wait their turn behind more immediate concerns. Whatever picture they'd painted, she doubted it captured anything close to the truth of who she'd actually become.

She turned her attention back to the mission, filing the thought away with everything else she wasn't ready to examine too closely, and focused instead on the estate walls rising ahead of them, and the work still waiting to be done. The Baron, at least, was a problem she knew exactly how to solve. The crown was another matter entirely, one she still had no idea how to face. But that, too, could wait. Everything else always had, and it would again. She stepped through the gate, Aiden at her side, and let the mission take over completely.