Threads of Destiny

4

The orientation hall was alive with noise — the scraping of chairs, the shuffle of papers, the nervous laughter of forty-five strangers all pretending not to be nervous. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, casting bars of light across rows of wooden desks.

Léa Vance clutched her folder of schedules to her chest, scanning the sea of unfamiliar faces. She had told herself not to feel small, not to miss home, not to think about her parents waving from the platform. But the reality of Étoilemont, of this great capital, pressed heavy on her shoulders.

She slid into an empty seat near the middle, trying to look as though she belonged.

“Is this free?”

The voice was bright, musical, full of easy confidence. Léa looked up to see a girl with auburn hair and a grin that felt like sunlight.

“Yes,” Léa said quickly.

The girl sat without hesitation, dropping her bag at her feet. “Appie Ramone,” she said, offering her hand.

“Léa Vance.”

Appie’s smile widened. “Finally. Another girl. I counted—there are seventeen of us. Seventeen, Léa, in a room of forty-five.” She gestured around the hall, where clusters of boys were already laughing too loudly, sizing each other up. “I’m not saying I mind, but still. Safety in numbers, right?”

Despite herself, Léa laughed, the tension in her chest easing. “Right.”

Appie leaned closer, lowering her voice in mock conspiracy. “You and me? We stick together. I don’t do this lone wolf thing.”

The warmth of her tone was disarming, and Léa found herself nodding. She had expected to feel lost today, invisible in the capital. Instead, she had been claimed, in the best way, by this vibrant stranger.

At the front of the hall, a professor cleared his throat, and the chatter quieted. Names began to be read, students sorted into groups, the machinery of the program slowly unfolding.

Neither Léa nor Appie noticed the tall boy slipping into a seat at the far end of the hall, his dark hair falling into his eyes, his gaze distant and unreadable.

Baron Blaise, newly arrived from Montferrat, said nothing. He kept his hand hidden in his lap and his thoughts far from the classroom. For now, he was just another name on the list.

But not for long.

---

The orientation session spilled into the courtyard, where long tables of coffee and croissants waited. Students gathered in loose knots, laughing too loudly, trying to carve out their places in this new life.

Baron Blaise stood at the edge of one such group — six boys who had already started trading jokes about professors’ reputations and the city’s best cafés. His posture was easy, hands in his pockets, his smile practiced.

“So, Blaise,” one of them asked, “where are you from?”

“Verschau,” Baron answered smoothly. He let the word hang, as though it were no different from saying any other small city in Montferrat.

“Ah, that’s near the mountains, right? Do you ski?” another boy asked.

“Sometimes,” Baron said, a smile tugging at his lips.

More questions followed — what kind of music he liked, whether he followed football, if he had a girlfriend back home. Baron gave each reply with polite warmth, a small laugh here, a shrug there. On the surface, he fit neatly into the rhythm of the group, as though he had always been one of them.

But he never spoke more than a sentence at a time. Never asked them questions back. He offered nothing that reached deeper than the mask of camaraderie.

When the boys burst into laughter over some shared joke, Baron smiled too, though the sound rang hollow in his ears. He felt their curiosity brushing against him, as though they sensed there was something behind his careful ease. But none of them pressed, not yet.

For now, he was simply the quiet boy from Verschau. Friendly enough, good-looking enough, but reserved.

And that was how Baron preferred it.

---

The dormitory was a sprawling stone building, old enough to creak when the wind pressed against its shutters, new enough to carry the faint smell of fresh paint in the stairwells. Students shuffled through the halls with boxes, duffel bags, and nervous excitement.

Léa dragged her suitcase up the second flight of stairs, slightly out of breath, the paper with her room number clutched in her hand. Room 214.

She turned the corner and stopped. A familiar auburn head was already bent over a door at the end of the corridor, key jangling in the lock.

“Appie?”

Appie spun, grinning the instant she saw her. “Léa! No way. Don’t tell me—”

Léa held up her paper, laughing. “Two-fourteen.”

Appie tapped the door beside hers with a flourish. “Two-fifteen. Neighbors!”

For a moment they just laughed, the coincidence too perfect. Then they set about helping each other, dragging suitcases inside, propping doors open with sneakers, comparing the nearly identical rooms. Both were modest: single beds, narrow desks, shelves waiting to be filled with books and photographs.

“This is fate,” Appie declared, throwing herself dramatically onto her bed. “You and me. First in class, now in the dorm. I’d say the universe is rooting for us.”

Léa smiled, sitting cross-legged on her own bed across the hall. “Or maybe it knows I’d be lost without you.”

“Please,” Appie waved her off with mock offense. “I’d be bored out of my mind without you. Now we both win.”

The sound of voices and footsteps echoed up and down the hall — strangers becoming roommates, strangers becoming friends. For Léa, though, the capital no longer felt quite so overwhelming. The city was big, yes. The future was uncertain, yes.

But she wasn’t facing it alone.

---

The flat smelled faintly of dust and polished wood, the kind of place that had been closed up between tenants but held on to its shape like an old coat. It was on the third floor of a narrow building, five minutes from the university gates. The windows looked out over a street lined with cafés and bookshops, the rooftops jagged against the late afternoon sky.

Baron set his suitcase down and stood in the center of the room. A bed, a desk, a shelf. Enough to live, but bare of history. For him, that was a relief. No echoes of concert halls here. No reminders of the world he had left behind.

He unpacked slowly: shirts folded into drawers, textbooks stacked neatly, a single photograph of his parents placed face-out on the desk. His keyboard — the portable one he had argued with himself about bringing — remained in its case under the bed, untouched.

A knock came on the door. Baron opened it to find a cheerful woman in her forties balancing a plate of pastries.

“Baron Blaise?” she asked warmly.

“Yes.”

“I’m Clara Maret. Your father’s an old friend of my husband’s. We live two floors down. My husband insisted I bring you something sweet to welcome you.”

Baron accepted the plate with a small smile. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

Her eyes softened as she looked at him — tall, polite, a little too reserved for a boy his age. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate. My son’s about your age. He’s usually downstairs tinkering with that ridiculous motorbike of his.”

“I’ll remember,” Baron said.

When she left, the flat was quiet again. Baron placed the plate on the counter, then sank onto the bed. Through the open window, he could hear the city — a busker’s violin on the corner, the chatter of students in the street below, the faint hiss of espresso machines from the café across the way.

It wasn’t music, not the kind he had lost. But it was a rhythm. A new one.

Baron leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. He told himself he was ready to start over.