Tangled paths

Chapter 1

ARIADNE’S POV

My knees ached from hours of scrubbing the cracked tiles of Santa Lucia.

The clouds outside pressed against the windows, thick and grey, like they wanted to weep for us. Maybe they knew we were forgotten.

I was born with no last name.

No legacy. No bloodline to inherit or betray.

Just a first name—Ariadne—scribbled in fading ink on the records of Santa Lucia orphanage, where the ceilings leaked in winter and the walls carried the signs of lost hope.

"Move faster, snail!" Clara's voice snapped from behind me, her brush clattering to the ground with a sharp clink.

"We’re not getting out of here before dawn if you keep scrubbing like a ghost in a daydream."

I stiffened, gripping my brush tighter. She always found a way to jab at me.

“I’m doing my part,” I muttered without looking up.

“Could’ve fooled me,” she scoffed, stepping closer so her shadow loomed beside mine. “Maybe if you spent less time staring off like some lost princess and more time actually working, we’d finish quicker.”

I clenched my jaw, scrubbing harder as my knees throbbed against the floor.

Lily gave me a sympathetic glance from across the row but said nothing. No one ever said anything when Clara decided to turn her boredom into bullying.

The matrons called me Aria, saying “Ariadne” was too heavy a name for a child like me.

Too weighty, too tragic.

They said it took heaven itself to weep before the last syllable fell from their lips.

Sometimes, I liked to imagine my mother had named me after something divine.

Ariadne—the princess from myth, the girl who led a man out of a labyrinth only to be abandoned for it.

Maybe my mother thought I’d be strong too.

Or maybe she just liked the way it sounded.

Santa Lucia was an old grey building on the edge of Kendal that never asked for us.

The windows were smudged with fingerprints and rain stains.

There were sixty of us, packed in creaky beds, wearing clothes donated by outside families—most too big, too small, or faded.

It wasn’t about style or comfort. It was about covering up and staying warm.

“Do you think if we scrub hard enough, the floor will finally give up and shine?” Lily whispered beside me, gripping her worn-out brush like a weapon.

“Maybe if we pray harder,” Elsie muttered from my other side, rolling her eyes.

“I’d rather pray for hot porridge,” I said, earning quiet chuckles from both of them.

“Quiet!”

Sister Elodia’s sharp voice sliced through the air from across the hall.

She wasn’t looking, but somehow, she always saw.

I sometimes wondered if she could see through her veil.

We bent our heads again, scrubbing in mindless circles, our knees throbbing, our thoughts drifting anywhere but here.

Later that day, as we folded laundry in the musty back room, Clara strolled in—always first to pick the best clothes from the donations pile.

She didn’t speak to me at first, just picked up a new cardigan and twirled.

“Not bad,” she mused aloud. Then her eyes flicked to mine. “Too pretty for nobody like you, though.”

I ignored her.

“Still pretending you’re special, Aria?” she sneered, stepping closer.

“You think because Sister Elodia likes you, you’re above the rest of us?” I spat.

She snatched the cardigan from my hands and tossed it into a pile of soapy water nearby.

I flinched, not for the clothes—but because Lily had stitched that one for me.

“Clara, stop,” Peniel said from the corner, her voice barely a whisper.

Clara turned on her. “Why don’t you cry about it, mouse?”

“Leave her alone,” I said, louder this time.

Clara’s lip curled. “Oh? Big sister’s finally using her voice?”

She stepped close enough that I could smell her peppermint breath. “You’ll age out soon. Then what? No one wants a moody leftover.”

I swallowed hard, feeling every eye in the room on me.

“Doesn’t matter,” I muttered. “At least I’m not cruel.”

Clara’s hand shot out, shoving me back a step.

I didn’t fall. But I wanted to. Just to have a reason to stay on the ground and not look up again.

“Enough!” Sister Elodia’s voice thundered behind us. Clara quickly stepped back.

But as the nun turned away, Clara shot me a victorious glance.

No punishment. No justice. Just quiet misery.

At night, when the building settled into restless silence and the air turned cold enough to bite, I would lie awake listening.

To the giggles from the girls across the dorm.

To little Peniel’s muffled weeping under her pillow, thinking no one heard her.

But I always heard.

Her cries always sounded louder than the laughter, crawling into the corners of my mind, waking memories I’d buried too deep to reach.

I never asked her why she cried—not because I didn’t care, but because here, sorrow had a hundred names.

And sometimes speaking it out loud only made it worse.

So, I stayed silent.

Not a comfort, but a witness.

And somehow, it felt like the only thing I had left to offer.

All I had was my silence... and the key that hung around my neck—the only personal thing that hadn't been taken from me.

I was brought to Santa Lucia when I was a baby.

Next week would mark my fifteenth year at Santa Lucia.

I am among the oldest now—the ones who had seen it all.

I had watched the younger girls get adopted, one by one, leaving with bright smiles I could never remember having.

Every few months, I'd put on my best dress—sewn by hand from scraps—and pretend like this time would be different.

I'd wait by the iron gate, searching every stranger’s face for some flicker of hope.

But it never came.

Their eyes would flick past me like I was invisible, or worse like I was something to avoid.

I was too old. Too sharp. Too silent.

Even Sister Elodia’s words—cold and clipped—didn’t help.

No one wanted a girl who had learned how to wear her scars like armour.

I stopped trying after my nineteenth birthday. The visits became a cruel ritual I’d endure, pretending to care, but secretly knowing that no one would ever choose me.

And so, I stopped dressing up, stopped waiting by the gate, and just became another face in the crowd of orphan girls.

Another sigh was lost in the cracks of Santa Lucia’s crumbling walls.

Yet even in the silence, something inside me whispered—a faint, stubborn pulse—that I didn’t belong here.

That I was never meant to stay hidden between these broken walls.

I didn’t know what waited beyond them.

I didn’t know when or how.

But somehow... I knew.