Real courage.
The kind that required putting her heart on paper.
Bea sat up straight.She reached for her pencil.Her hand hovered over an empty page.For the first time in her career as B.Adroit, she wasn’t drawing from anger.Or indignation.Or scorn.She was drawing fromlove.
It terrified her.
But it steadied her too.
She lowered the pencil.Slowly, strokes formed on the page, light at first, then firmer, then fierce.
Nicholas Archer.
Not the buffoonish caricature she’d drawn dozens of times.Not the elegantly dressed puppet she’d portrayed him as.Not the man bending under the weight of party politics.
But the man he had shown himself to be.The man she knew he was.
Jaw set with purpose.Eyes bright with conviction.Spine straight.
Not Hargrave’s co-hort.Not Winston’s pawn.Not VanDeVere’s shadow.
Just Nicholas.
A man standing alone on the floor of the House, papers in hand, not flinching despite the jeers around him.A man speaking his mind with clarity and fire.A man finally breaking free of every chain that had held him.
A man brave enough to love her, even when she had made that impossible.
Tears fell onto the vellum, but she wiped them away quickly before they could smear the drawing.
By the time she added the final lines—a subtle shading of light behind him, a symbolic burst of illumination—her heart was too big for her chest.
This wasn’t satire.It was a tribute.The vulnerability of it nearly sent her to her knees.But the truth if it made her proud.She didn’t stop.She added her signature.B.Adroit.For the first time, the pseudonym didn’t feel like a mask.
It felt like a promise.
The clock on her mantel chimed midnight.Bea startled, looking toward the window.The house was silent.Even the servants had long since retired.
She stared down at the drawing, hands trembling again, but for a different reason now.
This sketch was dangerous.Not because it mocked the powerful, but because it revealed her heart.
If Nicholas saw it, he would know.
Perhaps not immediately.Perhaps not consciously.But some part of him would understand that she believed in him.
Not in his party.Not in his family.Not in his ambitions.
Inhim.
And that was the one truth she had never dared to give him.
Until now.
She moved quickly, gathering her things with a clarity she had not felt in years.She snatched up the drawing and placed it solidly between the pages of a pamphlet.
She changed into the brown cloak, pulled up the hood, and slipped out of her room.
The corridor was dark and still.
