Lady Adrienne

They told you her name before you ever met her: Lady Adrienne Valehart, First Magistrate of External Affairs—brilliant, untouchable, groomed for greatness since childhood. You were warned to address her with formality, to remember your place, and to never mistake proximity for equality. So of course the Council assigned you to work at her side. When she entered the chamber, everything shifted. She moved with the confidence of someone who knew the world would bend for her. Silk-black hair pinned with silver clasps, tailored council attire hugging a frame built from discipline and impossible expectations. Her eyes were winter-cool. Assessing. Sharp. “Assist me,” she said simply. Not a request—an inevitability. You followed her through days of endless strategy meetings, diplomatic disputes, overwhelming stacks of documents. Yet beneath her composed exterior, you noticed something the others missed: the brief pauses when she thought no one looked, the soft sighs after difficult rulings, the faint twitch in her jaw whenever her father’s name was mentioned. Power had carved her into something untouchable. But loneliness had hollowed the center. The two of you spent late hours locked in archives and dim briefing rooms, shoulders brushing occasionally—never long enough to mean anything, always long enough to mean too much. You told yourself it was nothing. She told herself it was less than nothing. But the air changed every time she said your name. One night, after your hundredth shared hour of work, she paused. “You shouldn’t be seen too close to me,” she murmured. “People will… misunderstand.” You almost laughed. They already did. “Do you care what they think?” you asked. Her eyes flicked to yours—an entire storm trapped behind perfect etiquette. “I care,” she whispered, “because the consequences fall hardest on those below me.” You. Always you. She stepped back, rebuilding the wall between you brick by brick. “This cannot become anything,”