CHAPTER 293: ROMANIA WAS NOW BOUND TO A MAN WHO SMILED WHILE ANNEXING NATIONS.

In a small bookshop near the Daugava River, hidden between a shuttered bakery and a government office painted in Soviet grays, three people gathered in the cellar as dusk crept in.

There were no passwords.

No secret knocks.

Only shared glances and the quiet acceptance that each person entering was now bound to something they might not live to see succeed.

Elza, the shop’s owner, lit a lantern with steady hands.

She was older mid-forties with deep lines across her face and an even deeper stillness behind her eyes.

Across from her sat a young law student named Andris.

His fingers trembled, not from cold but from the the seriousness.

Next to him, his cousin Mareks, recently discharged from the Latvian border guard, kept his coat on and eyes sharp.

Elza laid out three folded leaflets on the table.

"They come off the same press we used for nationalist poetry two winters ago," she said softly. "Smuggled it from Jelgava before the Soviets could seize it."

Mareks picked one up.

It was handwritten, beautifully done, almost poetic in its precision.

"To forget is to surrender. To remember is to resist."

Andris looked up, startled. "You want to distribute these? Now?"

Elza met his gaze. "I don’t want anything. But the silence is choking us. These are not weapons they’re reminders."

Mareks leaned in. "You understand what happens if we’re caught?"

"I do," she said without hesitation. "They don’t fear guns. They fear memory. Let’s make them fear."

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then Andris reached across the table and folded a leaflet carefully into his coat.

"I’ll take five," he whispered.

Thousands of kilometers away, beneath the chandeliers of the Élysée Palace.

Romania’s King Carol II stepped into the golden reception hall to the polite applause of diplomats, ministers, and a few scattered French nobles still clinging to the illusions of Versailles.

Étienne Moreau, Head of State of France and architect of a new, quiet empire, greeted him with a smile so polished it nearly gleamed.

"Majesty," Moreau said smoothly, "France is honored to receive such a distinguished guest in these uncertain times."

Carol bowed lightly. "And Romania is grateful for France’s continued strength in a world losing its footing."

They clasped hands briefly, photographers capturing the moment like a scene from a play gestures full of meaning but devoid of commitment.

Dinner followed, full with pleasantries and references to old alliances.

But the real conversation began hours later in Moreau’s private study.

The fire burned low.

The servants had been dismissed.

The mask was lowered.

"I’ll speak plainly, President," Carol said, sipping dark wine. "We are exposed. Germany eyes our western lands. Hungary wants Transylvania. Russia watches the Black Sea. We cannot stand alone."

Moreau leaned back in his chair, the firelight flickering across his face. "And yet you have. For nearly twenty years."

"With the illusion of a protective West. That illusion has shattered."

There was no denial, only a thin smile from Moreau.

Carol pressed forward. "We seek partnership. Military support. Economic assurances. A visible, unambiguous alliance."

Moreau swirled his wine. "And what do you offer in return?"

"Oil. Grain. Rail access to the Balkans. We are not without value."

"And loyalty?" Moreau asked, his voice soft but edged. "To the European order we are now shaping?"

Carol met his gaze. "We understand what silence costs. We choose sound."

Moreau’s smile widened slightly. "Then we shall draft something more enduring than handshakes."

He stood and walked to a side table, retrieving a folder.

"One thing, though," he added, not looking back. "Your ministers. Some... are inconvenient."

Carol raised an eyebrow. "You’ve done your reading."

"I’ve done my counting," Moreau said coldly. "And revolutions begin with whispers in the wrong rooms."

Carol stood slowly, the smile gone from his face. "France offers safety, then, on condition."

"France offers clarity," Moreau replied.

There was silence between them, but no misunderstanding.

In the Kremlin, Stalin sat alone in his study, the reports spread like a fan before him.

The Baltic situation was evolving.

Not unraveling yet, but shifting in ways that interested him.

His eyes passed over intercepted notes.

Latvia and Lithuania, cultural exchange agreement signed quietly.

Poland and Czechoslovakia establishing joint military codes.

Romania seeking French guarantees.

He smiled faintly.

"Cornered mice build tunnels," he murmured to himself.

Beria entered without announcement, holding a thin dossier.

"Polivanova reports increased underground activity in Riga and Tartu," he said. "Pamphlets. Small meetings. Literary resistance."

Stalin lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly.

"Literary," he repeated, amused. "Always the poets. Always the professors."

He looked up. "Is it dangerous?"

"No," Beria replied quickly. "Symbolic."

"Symbols are seeds," Stalin said. "And seeds grow."

He tapped the ash from his cigarette.

"Send a proposal to Berlin. Let’s discuss spheres again. Quietly. Eastern borders, cultural management, mutual observation. No treaties, just understanding."

Beria hesitated. "And the Baltic?"

Stalin stood, walking slowly to the tall windows overlooking Moscow’s frozen skyline.

"We gave them silence, Lavrentiy," he said. "They chose to speak again."

A pause.

"Now we teach them what speaking costs."

Back in Riga, the river was beginning to ice, thin sheets forming like silver veins across the black current.

Elza’s bookshop had been closed for the evening, but inside the cellar, a small group gathered again.

This time they were six.

A priest.

A schoolteacher.

A former army captain.

Two students.

And Elza.

"I heard they’re watching the train stations," the captain whispered. "We’ll need new routes."

The priest nodded. "I know a man in Jelgava. He’s kept a printing press hidden since the revolution."

"We don’t have an army," said the schoolteacher quietly. "But we have words."

"They must be read," Elza added. "Spoken aloud. Whispered in classrooms. Passed from hand to hand."

Mareks entered quietly with news.

"Two of the pamphlets were found on a tram. No arrests yet. But they’re looking."

No one panicked.

No one fled.

They had passed the threshold already.

There was no return.

On the following morning in Paris, King Carol was preparing for departure.

The Romanian and French flags hung side by side in the Élysée courtyard.

He stood beside Moreau for the cameras, both smiling like old friends.

"May this partnership usher in a more stable Europe," Moreau announced to the crowd.

Carol smiled, but his eyes were tired.

In private, his thoughts were elsewhere on the cost of French support, on which ministers he would soon need to remove to keep his promise, and on how deeply Romania was now bound to a man who smiled while annexing nations.

In Tartu, Estonia, the snow had finally fallen.

Liisa crouched beneath the floorboards of her parents’ house, her fingers blackened with ink, the notebook open in her lap.

She wrote by candlelight.

"We whisper now, but even whispers are louder than silence. I will keep writing. They cannot erase what they cannot see."

Above her, the radio played a Soviet hymn in a language her grandparents never spoke.

She didn’t cry.

She didn’t pause.

She only turned the page.

In the Moscow’s foreign ministry, a coded letter was sent to Berlin via courier.

It contained three sentences and no signatures.

"Stability is in everyone’s interest. The borders of today may remain. If lines of influence are respected."

The message was received in Berlin, read by the man with a square mustache and cold eyes, and quietly filed under a folder marked

Barbarossa.

By the end of 1937, Europe looked unchanged to the careless eye.

Borders remained where they were.

Except for Spain, Austria and Estonia.

Capitals stood.

Treaties were not yet torn.

But beneath the snow, beneath the flags, beneath the silence, there was movement.

People were choosing.

Speaking.

Aligning.

Preparing.

Some in fear.

Some in defiance.

And in every capital, every palace, every underground cellar, a single unspoken truth remained.

1938 would not be quiet.