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Absently correcting a mark on her tablet, Julia continued, ‘Not that I haven’t had offers.

When my father was alive, he rejected them all.

They want the estate. The name. Never me.

You understand now why I prefer our alternative means of securing an heir.

I despise the entire institution of marriage. ’

‘I’d drink to that,’ Loren said weakly.

‘Shall we?’ Julia tipped her cup in his direction, and Loren met it with his own. Metal clinked. ‘A toast to forging our own paths.’

‘To partnership,’ he added, ‘that means something.’

‘To families built, not born.’

Fragile hope dared take root in Loren’s chest as they each took a sip, emboldened when familiar sticky sweetness washed across his tongue. Lassius wine. For once, the taste didn’t drag him down.

Heavy footsteps interrupted from the hall, and a gasping Ax stumbled into the study.

‘Axius, what’s this?’ Julia said, affronted.

‘It’s the boy,’ Ax wheezed. Julia’s eyes darted to Loren, but Ax grunted, ‘The other one. And Clovia. You better come quick.’

Sprawled like a discarded doll, Clovia lay in the atrium, face submerged in the plunging pool. Her head bobbed in the water, loose hair writhing in ropy strands.

Felix was kneeling beside her .

Loren’s throat seized.

Julia inhaled sharply, and Felix’s head jerked up. Loren took stock of his face, searching for a clue to prove he couldn’t have done this, but his expression gave away nothing. Only the tight line of Felix’s mouth exposed him affected at all.

The dreams of a Felix let loose on the city. Was this how the end began?

‘Augustus!’ Julia shouted as Ax crumpled.

Gus lumbered in, blinking away sleep. When his slow brain caught up with the scene, he grunted, reaching for a weapon. Aurelia’s father’s sword had hung from his belt last night. Not anymore. Undeterred, he lunged for Felix and wrestled him from Clovia’s body.

Felix didn’t struggle. Just stared at Julia with hard eyes.

‘I thought it strange,’ she said, meeting Felix’s gaze, ‘when she didn’t arrive to dress me this morning. I dismissed it. Perhaps she was tired.’

‘We were drinking,’ murmured Ax. ‘Last night.’

‘Tripped, did she? Interesting she landed face down in the pool with no one to help her. I believe, Axius, I instructed you to stay off the wine.’

Ax scrubbed a palm across his forehead, smearing nervous sweat.

‘Interesting,’ Julia continued, nostrils flaring, ‘that she seemed sober enough when she brought me parchment before bed. Are my guards so lax that not even my staff is safe in my own house? She’s lain here for hours, and the street boy found her first. Disturbing.’

Ax swallowed.

‘It hasn’t been hours,’ Felix corrected. ‘And she didn’t drink herself to death. Or drown.’

Julia’s expression didn’t stray from cold impasse. ‘You know this how?’

‘She wasn’t here when I left earlier. Feel her. Her blood is warm. This happened moments ago. ’

When nobody moved to prove him wrong, Felix squirmed free to pull Clovia from the water. Rivulets streamed down her pale face. ‘Poppy sap. Can’t you smell it?’

‘I can’t smell a thing.’

‘Nose-dim, all of you. Then look. Bruises.’

Fighting nerves, Loren inched closer until he, too, knelt by the woman.

Felix wore a guarded expression, protective almost, for the corpse under his hands.

His wariness gave Loren pause, an attitude for this dead stranger he simply couldn’t place, but when he reached to pull aside Clovia’s hair, Felix made no move to stop him.

Deep welts of purple and red mottled her throat, a violent necklace.

Gingerly, Loren brushed her cheek, wincing at the chill.

‘She was strangled,’ he confirmed.

‘Poisoned and strangled.’ Julia’s lips pressed tighter, and she gestured to the guards. ‘Clear her from the room.’

Ax and Gus trudged forward to gather poor Clovia and shuffle her away to somewhere private.

Sickness filled Loren’s chest. He wondered what would become of her body, if she had family outside Julia’s estate, where along the road from Pompeii she might be buried.

If anyone would care how a serving-woman met this gruesome end.

‘Wait.’ Loren fished in his pocket and pulled out a coin.

He slipped it into Clovia’s slack mouth.

It paled in comparison to rituals he’d seen at lavish funerals he’d attended as a child, but it would at least pay her passage with a psychopomp, Charon or Mercury, to the underworld.

When he dragged his eyes from hers, fixed in death, it was to find another pair studying him.

Again, that wariness. Felix carried a sombreness at odds with his flippant nature. Reverence from the least reverent in the room. Suddenly Loren was struck with the impression, unfounded as it was, that Felix felt Clovia’s death most keenly of any of them.

At last, Gus and Ax carried Clovia from the atrium, and silence settled .

Felix broke it first.

‘Before you ask,’ he said, ‘I didn’t kill her.’

Julia held up a hand and ducked her head. ‘I know.’

It was the last thing Loren expected her to say. But her certainty didn’t waver, even as the frozen set of her mouth thawed into a politely cool smile.

‘Are you accompanying us today, Felix?’ she asked.

‘The games aren’t my style.’

Her lips quirked. ‘Too bloody?’

‘Something like that,’ said Felix.

Loren’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. There’d been a murder . Yet they spoke of gladiator games casually as the weather.

‘Shame.’ Julia turned. ‘They ought to be entertaining. Loren, get dressed. We leave within the hour.’

Sharp footsteps receded from the atrium. The instant they faded, Loren pulled back from Felix’s side. ‘Where were you when I woke?’

‘I had business in the city. Does it matter?’

‘Does it . . .’ Loren’s chest heaved. He braced a hand against his heart. ‘Yes. Because.’

Because murder. Because Julia hadn’t made a lick of sense. And because Felix’s new tunic dripped with corpse-water, and he was barefoot as the ghost in Loren’s dream.

‘I didn’t do it,’ Felix repeated. ‘You know I didn’t.’

That was the trouble. Loren wanted to believe he wouldn’t, but since the moment they met, Felix had done his best to keep Loren from knowing any part of him.

Irony rang hollow in Loren’s ears that, if it came to it, he knew more of the ghost’s truths than he did the real Felix’s.

At least the ghost made his intentions clear.

‘Felix,’ Loren said, half a plea, ‘I don’t know a thing about you.’

‘Then you haven’t paid attention,’ Felix said, cold as marble. ‘I watched my own father’s murder. Do you honestly think I could have done this? ’

Like snuffing a candle, Loren’s anger fizzled. Felix-induced guilt again. Any time Loren gained ground chipping through those walls, it came at the expense of hurting Felix. Now he felt like Pompeii’s biggest jerk.

‘I didn’t know,’ Loren tried.

Felix cast him a scathing look. ‘Spare me the pity and go and get dressed. If Julia wants to parade you around, you better look presentable.’

Loren thumbed a streak of mud on the tile. ‘You should come with us.’

‘So you can keep an eye on me. So you can ask questions when I’ve told you to stop.’ Felix’s fists curled. ‘Because you don’t trust me.’

You haven’t given me a reason to , Loren nearly said.

Except that wasn’t true. He flashed back to last night: Felix breaking into the estate, if only to ensure Loren’s safety. Felix listening to him ramble in the dark. How, despite the many holes Loren left for him to slip through and end their agreement, Felix kept coming back.

His bed was empty that morning. But he was here now.

‘Trust my experience if you trust nothing else from me. It’s never a good sign when a rich person takes an interest in you,’ Felix said. ‘I know what it’s like to be used.’

He stormed from the atrium before Loren could work past the conflict in his chest.