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‘Your time would be better spent taking care of your friend. He is as lost as you are right now.’ The Priest’s frown deepened.

He pressed a kind, condescending hand to Loren’s elbow.

‘Loren, this was never the place for you. You suspect, same as I, that your path never ran parallel with Isis. Go home.’

Loren split down the middle.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

He wanted to wail. He wanted to beg. He wanted to drag the Priest into the cella, show him the spilled wine, paint the wings for him.

But one of the few things Loren carried with him from home was the ability to take heartbreak with a stiff upper lip.

He was intimately acquainted with dismissal .

Humiliation followed him to the closet where he hung his robes for the last time. Camilia’s eyes bored into him as he tripped over Castor – or Pollux – keeping watch at the door. He should have spent more time memorising their differences. Now he’d never trip over them again.

Casting a last look at the altar bowl, the smoke and the Priest’s farewell nod, Loren blinked back tears and left.

Dusk brought a sprinkle, rain rinsing surface grime from the streets, but Loren still felt like gutter sludge.

He looped the merchant district, dodging shopkeepers closing stalls for the night.

Stopping at Nonna’s door didn’t make him feel better, even when she passed him a basket of leftover bread, pears and dates.

‘Take the empty basket to Livia. Tell her I need more waxed cloth.’ Nonna waved Loren off before he could utter hello.

Errand boy.

He took the long way back to the brothel, even as the shower worsened, crossing through the Forum.

A dozen or so councilmen had convened before the Temple of Apollo, likely fostering rumours about the helmet thief.

A boy stood among them, Celsi, the constant thorn in Loren’s side, rubbing sleep from his eyes like he’d rather be anywhere else.

Terrorising the town with Aurelia, likely, or clinging to Camilia.

Still, Celsi had managed to get where Loren could never: in the council’s good graces.

Unable to help it, Loren inched nearer. Still too far to discern their conversation, but he could pick out faces.

Three scribes etched frantic notes onto wax tablets.

One older council member dozed while standing.

A man in a red tunic leaned lazily against an arch, staring sideways.

Priest Umbrius, a short, balding man gowned in purple, led the conversation.

Each time he emphasised a point, he brought his hand down on Celsi’s shoulder. Celsi wobbled on impact, face pinched.

Loren should be there at Umbrius’s elbow.

He worked harder than Celsi, cared more than Celsi.

He should be hearing their theories about the helmet, what they thought its disappearance meant, what they planned to do next.

For Apollo’s sake, it was Loren , not Celsi, who had the helmet piled under his laundry at that moment.

A dark possibility skittered across his mind, a scenario where he approached Umbrius, revealed the thief’s hideout and catapulted into the public eye as a city hero. He’d be one step closer to cementing himself in Pompeiian society, another barrier to his father dragging him home.

Felix, of course, would be executed.

Quickly as it passed, Loren killed the thought. Maybe if Felix were as cruel as in the nightmares, turning him in would be a given. But Loren had witnessed Felix’s death enough times. Couldn’t this world – the real world – be the one where Loren saves him?

Frustration, his default feeling lately, simmered anew, and he sidled closer, straining his ears.

One of the onlookers spotted him, her head snapping to lock eyes with him through the drizzle.

She stood beneath the shelter of a weeping awning, and if not for her pale pink silk dress, Loren would have thought her a shabby eavesdropper, too.

She had drawn up her white wool palla to protect her hair, but a long golden curl dangled free.

Her stare pinned him in place. He waited, heart stuttering, for her to nudge a nearby guard, point at Loren, humiliate him for his desperation. She didn’t. She merely gazed, curious but oddly knowing, as if – impossibly – she had expected to see him standing pathetic in the rain.

What was she doing there? Married to a councilman, maybe, but wives didn’t get involved in council affairs. If Loren had seen her before, it hadn’t registered in his memory.

Her lips parted. Foolishly, Loren thought she meant to address him, as though they weren’t separated by yards of distance. Embarrassment heated his neck.

He’d overstayed a welcome that hadn’t been his to begin with. He needed to leave .

Tearing from her stare, he turned to dash – and crashed into a wall of leather armour.

The guard caught Loren’s arm to steady him.

For a terror-soaked second, he panicked that the statesman’s soldier had come to demand where the thief hid.

But no. That man wore red, and besides, Loren had been veiled. No chance of recognition.

‘Watch your step, sweetheart.’ Rain dripped off the guard’s long, thin nose.

Mumbling an apology, Loren slipped free of his grasp and stumbled back, sandals slipping on wet stone. The man tried to say more, but Loren had dealt with enough guards and gatekeepers that day.

He hurried off.

Light greeted him from the brothel’s doorway, but Loren lingered in the drizzle, gazing at the closed shutters of his room.

If Felix had lit a lantern in Loren’s absence, he couldn’t tell.

He wondered if Felix had eaten, if he’d talked to Elias, if he was still awake at all.

Loren hoped not. Cowardly, yes, but after his bold promises to figure Felix out, returning empty-handed and jobless was like choking on a bite bigger than he could chew.

Surely Felix would offer sneering words, too, as if Loren didn’t carry enough shame already. He didn’t want to face that. But, dutifully, and because he had nowhere else to go, he went inside, counted the creaky stairs, paused outside his door. Rolling his shoulders back, he made to unlock it.

The door was already cracked.

When it swung open, Loren’s blood iced over at the emptiness that met him. The basket of soggy bread slipped from his numb fingers.

Loren hadn’t needed to worry about facing Felix. He ought to have feared the opposite.

Felix was gone.