Page 20

Aurelia was right. Here the imposing barrier was lower.

He’d scaled hundreds of walls before. All he needed was a handhold.

Scrambling up took no work, even when it strained still-fresh stitches.

From the roof, he scouted out the building.

Steam curled from a private bath, nearly masking a manicured interior garden.

Careful not to dislodge any tiles, Felix crept until he could drop into the open window of a bedroom, then slipped into a corridor.

Empty. A place like this should have servants and slaves and children and guests.

Instead, he found only silence but for the buzzing in his skull.

Sweat rolled from his hairline. From his pocket, he drew his stolen knife.

Two dark hallways later, he caught the flicker of a sconce. Voices, muffled around a corner. Felix flattened himself against a wall, hardly daring breathe.

‘I was told to cut you off past a jug,’ said a woman, ‘and you’ve had two.’

‘It’s not even the good stuff, Clovia, c’mon,’ drawled a man. ‘Mistress’ll be tied up with the boy all night. She won’t care if I have another.’

The boy . Felix’s heart skipped.

Clovia said in a low murmur, ‘She’s been so eager to meet him. Talks about little else. I worry about her nerves these days, anxious all the time, checking over her shoulder. I wonder . . . Forget it.’

‘Go on. I know everything that happens around here.’

‘Is that so, Ax?’ Clovia’s voice turned coy.

A polished silver vase in an alcove gave Felix a distorted glimpse of the two, nestled on a bench in a lovers’ nook. Clovia wore a servant’s garb half pulled from her shoulders, her legs draped over the lap of a thin man in oversized armour.

‘Rumour has it the boy isn’t who he claims.’ Ax’s hand crept up her thigh. ‘That he has a secret, and Mistress found out.’

Ice dropped into Felix’s stomach. Loren was a labyrinth of secrets, made more complicated by how readily he revealed everything else to the world. Felix didn’t know what all those secrets entailed, but if any led back to the helmet . . .

Who was their mistress, and what did she know?

Wine-hazy eyes caught his in the vase’s reflection.

Shit .

Felix fled. Clovia’s cry echoed in the hall as Ax gave chase, boots hitting the tile.

Felix was faster. He flew through halls, ducking left and right in the maze until the steps faded.

His legs burned, wounds searing, and he collapsed against a wall to clutch a stitch in his side.

Blood trickled from the reopened gash on his calf.

Mistake. Ax strolled around the corner ahead, adjusting his belt. ‘Enjoy the show? ’

‘Seen better,’ Felix panted.

Ax sneered, nostrils flaring. In a surprisingly swift motion, considering the alcohol curling off his breath, he grabbed Felix’s neck and slammed their foreheads together. Felix stumbled, dizzy, head throbbing.

‘I should run you through for interrupting.’ On his chest, Ax straightened a crest etched with laurels and a loopy letter. F , Felix recognised, if only because it was part of his own name. ‘But Mistress is sensitive to killing in the house. Let’s ask her permission before I gut you.’

For the second time in as many days, Felix found himself at the mercy of an angry guard. Ax kept a blade at the small of his back, hand steady despite the wine, on their trek to the garden. A lovely moonlit stroll, Felix reckoned, except for the knife prodding his midsection.

‘Better show her respect,’ Ax hissed as they crossed the green. ‘Piss her off, and she might make an exception to the no-killing rule.’

A triclinium overlooked the lawn. Warm light washed over a spread of picked-through food. Two figures reclined on the couches. A woman, half-drowned in a purple confection of a dress, laughed at something her companion said and popped a grape in her mouth.

‘Mistress,’ Ax announced. Both occupants turned.

Sitting there, wining and dining and . . . wooing this woman was Loren.

Rage sparked. Felix’s vision went red. ‘You bastard .’

The last thing Felix saw before Ax forced his face into the dirt was the woman’s arched brows shooting up.

Down in the grass, waiting for Ax to make good on his promise, it came as a comfort to be proven right.

Right that Loren was some idiot rich boy play-acting poverty.

Right that Felix was a bizarre charity case, a lesson on interacting with street scum.

Every budding politician had to practise manipulating the lower classes at some point, after all .

The blow from Ax’s knife never came.

Instead, the pressure on Felix’s neck released. Grass fell from his hair as he straightened slowly. Ax had retreated, and now Loren hovered over him, hands fluttering uselessly.

‘He’s mine,’ Loren was insisting. ‘A friend.’

‘Interesting choice of company,’ said the woman, tone drier than a Roman summer. She still lay draped across the couch, unbothered, as if strange boys tempted execution in her presence regularly. ‘Your troublemaking friend, I presume?’

‘He’s . . . protective.’

Am not . But Felix held his tongue.

‘Please, Julia,’ Loren said. ‘He didn’t mean harm. Or offence. He’s a ward of Isis. Killing him would displease her.’

Julia frowned. She had the dignified, sour face of an empress, and frowning only accentuated the crow’s feet around her eyes. Gods, Felix itched to steal from her.

‘He’s important to you?’ Disdain coloured Julia’s voice, as though she couldn’t fathom how Felix could be important to anyone.

‘Very, my lady,’ Loren insisted.

‘Like a little pet. Will he be spending the night, too?’

‘If he may.’

Felix tracked the way Julia’s eyes devoured Loren as he knelt. An uncomfortable chill rolled across his shoulders, but Loren was moon-eyed and oblivious. Julia could have been a goddess, the way he gazed.

Finally, she nodded. ‘Very well. You’ll both bathe, and tomorrow we’ll attend the games.’

A servant – Clovia, Felix realised, embarrassed – materialised from a doorway. She gestured for them to follow, and he shook off Loren’s offer to help him stand.

Felix felt Julia’s piercing, hungry gaze trace them into the shadows .

Bathing would have been awkward if the hot water hadn’t felt so damn good.

Loren didn’t say a word as they each washed, didn’t so much as glance in Felix’s direction. Fine by him. The bath complex was enormous. Easy to pick a corner and stick to it.

But when Clovia returned to show them to their rooms, Felix’s hopes fizzled. For one, it was a room, singular. Two, the narrow beds stood inches apart. Small mercy Julia hadn’t expected them to share. Three, once Loren shut the door behind them, their temporary truce evaporated with the bath steam.

‘I know you trip your way into any mess you come across,’ Felix said, ‘but why are you here?’

Loren huffed. For the first time that night, he met Felix’s gaze, coolly arrogant in a way meant to make anyone lowborn shrink.

‘Julia has connections. It was worth my time to speak to her – for a number of reasons, not the least being she has access to information about the helmet. The council’s theories about it.

Their plans. Information to keep you alive. ’

‘I keep myself alive. Forget the helmet. You aren’t here for the helmet.’

‘I said the helmet was one reason. I’m trying to fix my city, as it seems no one else cares to and, funnily enough, I have a life beyond you.’

‘Do you? You haven’t shown it.’ Felix eyed him. ‘She’s rich, she lured you here at night and nothing about that strikes you as odd. So either she offered something you want, or you really are that clueless. I don’t know which is worse.’

‘I can handle myself.’ Loren’s long hair curled, damp from the bath, several shades darker brown. Ridiculous, foolish, arrogant. ‘I’m not a child.’

‘I’m not your pet.’

‘Julia’s words. ’

‘Fuck Julia.’ Felix’s lip curled. ‘Or was that the plan? She’s a little old for you.’

Loren’s mouth snapped shut, disgust and fury spoiling his features, and Felix’s pulse quickened.

This was it. He’d pushed Loren too far, and now Felix had to flee the fallout, whether that came from stinging words or swinging fists.

Loren didn’t seem the type to take a physical approach to anything, but Felix’s bones were shaped by history proving the least likely perpetrators caused the worst hurt.

A polite knock interrupted the brewing storm.

Loren’s shoulders slumped, tension bleeding from the room, and he cracked open the door. Felix couldn’t see their visitor, blocked as they were by Loren’s stupid head, but a moment later, he returned clutching linen strips.

‘For my ankle,’ Loren explained flatly before Felix could ask. ‘Twisted it running. Go to sleep. I don’t want to talk.’

The dismissal rankled. ‘I’m not a pet.’

No response. Suddenly bone-tired, Felix picked a bed, kicked off his sandals and curled under the fine wool blanket.

Sleeping here was the last thing he wanted to do, but to his surprise, neither did he want to leave.

He wanted to figure out the weft and weave of Loren, pick at him until he unravelled, the same way Loren wore holes in Felix’s nerves.

He wanted to unstitch Loren from his life, so when Felix finally fled for good, there would be no loose threads.

Loren sank onto the other bed, drawing up his hurt ankle to wind linen around. His hair fell as a curtain between them.

‘What point are you trying to prove,’ Felix said when he couldn’t stand the silence a moment longer, ‘by keeping your hair so long?’

Loren stilled. ‘I said I don’t want to talk.’

‘Pity.’ Felix propped himself on his elbows. ‘I do.’

‘Has my hair offended you?’

Felix frowned. ‘No. ’

‘But it bothers you.’ Another pause. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

Loren considered it for another beat, then resumed wrapping. ‘My family has – had – expectations of me. One of which was that I must marry, and I must marry well.’

When Felix tried connecting the dots, his tired brain came up short. ‘And?’

‘It would seem frivolous to you. Privileged to turn from a comfortable life with a woman as beautiful as she is wealthy. I imagine I’d even grow to love her, in a way.’ Deep breath. He tucked his hair behind his ear. Water dripped onto tile. ‘But I’m not . . . for women.’

‘Not for women. As in . . . ?’ A red flush travelled up Loren’s neck in the half-light. ‘Oh.’

‘Yes.’ Loren tied off the strip and stared hard at the opposite wall. ‘But not the way you think. Not an eromenos, a boy-lover. I’d want a companion. Like Achilles and Patroclus – without the tragedy.’

‘You read too much.’

‘Can you blame me? Heroes make something of their lives.’

Felix picked at his thumbnail. ‘It isn’t unheard of for married men to take a lover.’

Loren sniffed. ‘There’s no authenticity in that. I’m tired of living with secrets. I want one thing I don’t have to hide.’

‘You’d sacrifice stability to chase after, what, your principles? That’s a fool’s dream.’

‘So call me a fool,’ said Loren.

For all he didn’t care, Felix burst with questions. Surely the prospect of marriage couldn’t be that distasteful. Guaranteed companionship, money and land and a solid foundation – a level of ease out of reach for a thief. Something permanent.

And Loren’s certainty when he spoke of wanting the company of a man came as a bright shock.

Felix himself was ambivalent towards gender.

When he needed a distraction, anybody would do, but some men only wanted men, and the same with women.

Except dalliances were for youths, not adults.

When it came time to settle, a man found a woman.

Rather, their parents arranged a handsome transaction.

Should the man be wealthy, he’d have a boy on the side. An eromenos.

Never someone equal. Always much younger. Lesser. A display of power, not love.

Loren wanted the impossible.

‘I still don’t see how this relates to your hair,’ Felix said.

‘Cutting it feels like giving in to expectations of what a man should be. I’m stubborn enough to hold out.’

Felix watched Loren finish his preparations for bed: tying his bandages, braiding damp hair, checking the locks, snuffing the candle. He crawled into the bed opposite, facing the wall. His tunic dipped, and Felix could count the knobs of his spine.

Quiet, until . . .

‘What Julia and I discussed tonight . . .’ Loren hesitated. ‘She thinks I have potential to be her heir. She offered a contract. Her estate in exchange for legitimising her political presence.’

‘Her heir?’ Felix sat up, but Loren didn’t turn over. ‘Do you know her?’

‘We only met tonight.’

‘Then why you? Of everyone in Pompeii, why . . .?’

‘Why some errand boy of a disreputable foreign cult?’ Loren’s voice took on an edge. ‘Is it so impossible that someone might take me seriously?’

‘That isn’t what I meant.’ Mouth dry, Felix wet his lips. ‘Did you agree?’

A pause. ‘No. No. Of course not.’ The dark all but swallowed Loren’s words. ‘I told you. I’m here for the helmet. The rest is – I’m not that distractible, whatever you think. Nothing will shake me from figuring you out, so don’t get your hopes up. ’

Felix huffed. ‘You keep saying that.’

‘Because I believe it.’ Loren flopped onto his back, wrist cradled against his chest, other arm splayed above his head. ‘Thank you. For coming after me. With how you stormed from the tavern, I thought you’d be long gone by now.’

A question lurked in Loren’s tone. Felix suspected he knew which. He picked a stray thread on the blanket, thinking back to the street party and the gazes sliding past – and the startling, sudden awareness that Loren looked at Felix and saw and didn’t look away.

Heat crept up Felix’s neck. ‘We have a deal. Three more days.’

‘Since when do you do as I say?’ When Felix stayed silent, Loren hummed and continued, ‘Thanks for staying, if nothing else.’

‘Loren?’

‘Yeah?’ Loren breathed.

‘Go to sleep.’

He did face Felix then, offered a sleepy, sweet smile and shut his eyes. A moment later, the rise of his chest evened beneath blankets.

For all his exhaustion, Felix stayed awake, stomach in knots.

What had he told Aurelia, just hours before?

Once Loren was safe, he would do whatever it took to ditch the city, clear of the debt between them.

But he remembered the starved way Julia watched Loren, sizing him up to swallow whole.

And Loren, who had no instinct for deceit, as Felix was coming to realise, hadn’t batted an eye.

The fact was that neither was safe, not here in this empty, labyrinthine estate.

He’d told Aurelia, Once Loren was safe.

He’d promised Loren, Till week’s end.

Felix stared at the ceiling, confused and conflicted, and didn’t sleep.