The night Morgan Pendragon fled the halls of Camelot, she did so without ceremony, but not without style.
It was late, just past the second watch, when the castle quieted and even the guards dulled to sleepy torpor. Outside her chamber, her two assigned maids had been dismissed hours earlier under the guise of a sudden headache. In reality, she'd simply grown sick of their fawning and useless chatter while she worked to finalize the necessary spells and gather her effects.
One satchel. One cloak. One sword she couldn't even properly wield, strapped awkwardly across her back. One thick tome of spells.
And one idiot foreigner waiting below her balcony, his presence utterly impossible to miss as he whispered just a little too loudly:
"—I still think this is a bad idea—!"
Morgan appeared at the railing above him, platinum hair shining faintly in the moonlight, her glare icy enough to freeze fire.
"We've been over this, Arc. And you're here anyway, so don't bother pretending you're going to try talking me out of it now."
Jaune shifted his weight from foot to foot, awkwardly adjusting his old breastplate as though it would protect him from her words. "Doesn't mean it's a good idea," he muttered, then caught her look and quickly added: "But you're right. I'm here."
He offered her his hands. She ignored them, instead stepping gracefully onto the stone railing and muttering a quick levitation charm before hopping down beside him.
When she landed without so much as a stumble, she couldn't help but notice Jaune's faint smile of admiration before he turned and motioned toward the dark forest beyond the castle walls.
Neither spoke as they slipped into the woods, the sounds of Camelot fading behind them until only the crunch of pine needles and their own breathing filled the silence.
And somewhere, high in one of the castle's towers, a figure in gray robes watched them go through the pane of a narrow window.
"Really now," Merlin murmured, sounding almost amused as he sipped from a golden chalice. "Running away with a farm boy. You do have a flair for dramatics, my dear."
He raised his other hand and traced a faint sigil into the air, ensuring the next set of castle patrols would simply not see two figures slipping into the forest that night.
"One last favor," he murmured, "and then… you're her problem, not mine."
The first few days were miserable.
At least, for Morgan.
Jaune, by contrast, appeared to have been built for this life: waking at dawn without complaint, starting fires without magic, hunting rabbits and birds with skill Morgan never bothered to cultivate, cooking said rabbits and birds into palatable meals. He carried most of their supplies, too, though she pointedly never acknowledged the effort beyond the occasional sniff of derision.
When she dared to imply his bread was too dry, he'd had the gall to respond:
"You're welcome to magic yourself something better, Your Highness."
She'd tried. And the result had exploded in her face. Literally.
He'd only laughed for five full minutes.
The countryside shifted the farther north they went. Rolling green hills became rugged ridges and scrubby forests. The people became scarcer, and the roads less maintained. Every so often they passed a settlement or two, mostly quiet hamlets clustered around a church and guarded by a few tired-looking men with spears. But the signs of Saxon encroachment became impossible to miss: blackened farmsteads, carcasses of livestock left to rot, and once—a burned chapel, its steeple collapsed into the earth.
It was a week into their flight when they stumbled into their first skirmish.
It happened on the edge of one of those half-burned villages. Morgan had sensed them first: faint traces of foreign Od pricking at her senses. She'd stopped walking, her spellbook half-open in her hand, her eyes narrowing.
"They're close."
Jaune glanced at her and instinctively reached for the hilt of his sword. He'd gotten used to the strange tingling sensation she described whenever magic or something unnatural drew near.
"How many?"
"Half a dozen. Perhaps more. Spread out."
He nodded, lips pressing into a thin line, and together they crouched behind a crumbling stone wall at the edge of town. Sure enough, not long after, six Saxons stalked into view—dark-haired men in patchwork mail, axes slung across their backs, laughing and shouting to one another as they pawed through the remains of the last raid.
Morgan was already murmuring an incantation when Jaune grabbed her wrist.
"Wait."
Her eyes flashed in indignation.
"I can handle them, Arc."
"That's not the point."
His voice was steady, but there was something taut in it as he stood, drawing his sword and stepping out from cover.
The fight was short, brutal, and ugly.
Morgan did step in—when she grew impatient watching him clumsily parry blow after blow. She cast a barrier to keep one of the Saxons from landing a killing stroke, then followed it up with a sharp gesture that sent another careening backward with a gust of wind.
But it was Jaune who struck the final blow, and Morgan who saw his eyes afterward—widened, pale, staring at the red on his blade and the body at his feet.
She dismissed the remaining Saxons with a cold burst of magical fire that sent them scattering.
When it was over, she watched him drop to his knees, breathing hard, his sword clattering to the ground.
Awkwardly, she knelt beside him.
"…You fought well," she offered after a moment. It sounded foreign even to her own ears.
He barked a weak laugh, though it held no humor.
"He was just… a man."
Morgan stiffened, her hand tightening slightly on her spellbook.
"He was an enemy."
"Still… a man."
She didn't know what possessed her then—maybe it was the way his shoulders trembled, or the way his usual smile was nowhere to be seen—but she reached out and pressed her palm lightly to his shoulder.
"Then mourn him. But do not let it break you."
His gaze slid up to meet hers, blue on blue, and after a beat he gave her a shaky nod.
That night, as they camped in the woods just beyond the village, she quietly cooked the rabbit he'd snared earlier, refusing to meet his eyes while she set it before him.
When he managed a faint smile and a quiet "thanks," she merely sniffed and looked away.
They lingered on the edge of Saxon territory for another month.
At first, they stayed to fight skirmishes—small bands of Saxons sent south to raid, which Morgan and Jaune intercepted and scattered time and again.
But as word of their victories spread, something began to change.
The hamlets they passed through no longer simply ignored them; they started offering food, thanks, and places to stay. Some even tried to press coins or charms into Jaune's hands when they thought Morgan wasn't looking.
And it didn't take long for the local girls to start noticing him, too.
Morgan first caught it in one of the villages further north—where a girl with golden-brown hair and a lilting laugh handed Jaune a loaf of bread and let her fingers linger just a little too long when she passed it to him.
Morgan said nothing.
The next day, a different girl offered to show him the way to the next town. Morgan cut her off with a curt, "We already know the way," and swept past before Jaune could protest.
By the time the third girl—this one a farmer's daughter with shy eyes—tried to slip a flower crown onto his head, Morgan's patience snapped.
"We don't have time for such frivolities."
Her voice was icy enough to silence not only the girl, but also Jaune himself, who merely blinked at her and rubbed the back of his neck.
That night, he tried to joke about it while they sat by the fire.
"Y'know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were jealous."
Morgan froze halfway through turning a page in her spellbook.
Then she slowly lifted her gaze and fixed him with a look sharp enough to peel paint.
"Jealous? Of that?"
Her voice dripped scorn, but her cheeks felt strangely hot, and she turned away before he could catch sight of it.
Jaune only grinned faintly to himself and poked at the fire.
"…If you say so, Your Highness."
By the second month, their rhythm had settled into something almost… comfortable.
By day, they hunted Saxons and patrolled the border. By night, they camped under the stars, where Morgan recited spells by firelight and Jaune repaired his armor or told stories of Vale and Beacon.
Sometimes, she even laughed at his stories—though she was careful to smother it into a polite cough afterward.
And sometimes, he would ask about Britain. About its ancient forests, its sacred stones, its quiet hills—things he could sense through her but would never see the way she did.
And she would find herself telling him. Things she hadn't even told Merlin.
How Britain spoke to her sometimes when she dreamt. How its power sang in her blood when she stood in certain places. How its loneliness and its weight were things no other soul could understand.
Except… perhaps, this foolish farm boy who somehow shouldered every burden placed upon him without even realizing it.
One night, weeks after their first battle, she watched him sleeping beside the fire—head pillowed on his arms, breath steady and quiet—and she muttered softly to herself:
"You really are a fool."
But her hand hovered over him for just a moment longer before she pulled it back.
For all her irritation at him—and the way the village girls kept looking at him—she couldn't deny the truth any longer.
She'd fled because she couldn't stand the idea of being nothing but another pawn in Uther and Merlin's game.
But she stayed because of him.
Because, somehow, he'd made her believe she could still be Morgan, even without the crown.
And that—more than any spell in her book—was the most dangerous magic of all.