She pauses with her hand on the door. "Because this is the only place where I've ever been allowed to be messy. Imperfect.Real." Her voice drops. "Everything else in my life has to be perfect. Polished. Exactly what my parents expect. But in here?" She turns to look at me. "In here, I can fail. I can experiment. I can make something ugly or strange or beautiful, and it's mine. No one judges it. No one tells me I'm doing it wrong."
The ache in her words nearly breaks me. This woman who has everything money can buy but has never been allowed towantanything real.
"Show me," I say.
She opens the door.
The space swallows us whole—massive and full of light from the skylights, dust motes dancing in the beams like falling stars. The air smells of metal and fire and machine oil, sharp and industrial. Equipment crowds the edges: welding torches, power tools, workbenches scarred with use. The concrete floor is stained with years of work, dotted with scorch marks that map failed experiments or successful creations.
But it's the sculptures that steal my breath.
They'rehuge—ten, fifteen feet tall, metal armatures supporting impossible structures. One looks like frozen wind made solid, great swooping curves of polished steel that seem to flow upward despite their weight. Another is all sharp angles and delicate balance, sheets of copper catching light and throwing it back in amberwaves. A third combines both—metal ribbons that spiral and twist through space like water refusing gravity's pull.
"Goddess," I breathe.
Charity moves past me into the space, trailing her fingers along one of the sculptures. "I started with small pieces. Jewelry boxes. Little decorative things my tutor thought were appropriate." Her smile is bitter. "Then I realized I could go bigger. Bolder. Make pieces that took up space instead of apologizing for existing."
I circle one of the wind sculptures, watching how it seems to move even though it's perfectly still. The metal is polished to mirror brightness in some places, left raw and textured in others. It's like frozen music—chaos and beauty held in impossible balance.
"These are incredible," I say, and mean it with every fiber of my being. "How did you learn this?"
"Trial and error, mostly. YouTube videos. Library books." She shrugs like it's nothing, but I see the pride underneath. "After my physics tutor taught me the basics when I was fourteen—stress points, weight distribution, how to make something stand that shouldn't be able to, I taught myself the rest."
I move between the sculptures, taking them in. Each one is different but carries the same signature—movement captured mid-flow, freedom expressed in steel and copper and bronze. Wind. Water. Flight. All the things she couldn't have in her gilded cage.
"You sign them?" I ask.
"Under a pseudonym." She walks to a completed piece in the corner, runs her hand along a small, engraved plate at its base. "Anima Venti."
Latin. Of course it's Latin.
"Soul of the wind," I translate, and something clicks into place. "Charity—"
"I know." She turns to face me, and there are tears in her eyes. "I've been signing my name as everything I couldn't be. Free. Untethered. Dancing with the sky." A bitter laugh. "Ironic, isn't it? Creating all this movement while I'm the one standing still."
The words gut me. I cross the space between us in three strides, cup her face in my hands, make her look at me.
"You make the wind dance," I say, fierce enough that she blinks. "You make metal flow like water. You createfreedomout of steel and fire and pure will." I let her see every ounce of what I feel. "But you thinkyoucan't be free?"
Her breath catches. "I don't know how."
"You're learning." I brush my thumb across her cheekbone, catching a tear before it falls. "Every time you leave the estate. Every time you choose something for yourself instead of what they expect. Every time you stand in this workshop and create something beautiful andyours." I lean my forehead against hers. "You're already free, Charity. You just haven't realized it yet."
She makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and I pull her into me, let her shake against my chest while Lucky presses against her legs in solidarity. We stand like that for a long moment, surrounded by her secret creations, her hidden strength made visible in steel and light.
When she pulls back, her eyes are red but clear. Determined.
"There's one more thing," she says. "Something I haven't shown anyone. Not even my parents know about this."
She leads me to the far corner of the workshop, to an area separated by heavy curtains. Her hand hovers over the fabric for a moment before she pulls it aside.
The dragon takes up the entire corner.
"My name," I murmur before I can stop myself, "means dragon."
Her head snaps toward me, eyes wide. "In Latin?"
"Yes."
