Page 27

Chapter XV

FELIX

O utside the cramped temple, the festival was in full swing despite its shaky beginning, again proving Felix’s theory that madness plagued every Pompeiian.

He followed Loren along the edges of the Forum, weaving between stragglers.

He kept his head low, pulling his stifling palla tighter.

A last-minute addition to his disguise, he’d swiped it after distracting its owner with a kindly offer to carry her laundry basket – before promptly dumping it to tail Loren into the temple.

They ducked down the same alley where Aurelia and Celsi had played marbles.

Felix repressed a shudder when he stepped over the scraped chalk remnants of his own face.

It touched a nerve he couldn’t explain. He lived.

He breathed. The drawing, haunted and inhuman and crested with wings, was no more than dust.

‘Felix?’

Fingers brushed his wrist, a question, and he jerked like Loren had pinched him. Maybe it was how for once, he wished the touch went deeper. Down to his bone. Anything to prove he wasn’t transparent.

‘Sorry.’ Loren pulled back. ‘You were drifting. What did you need to tell me? ’

Felix’s breath gusted out. Focus . ‘Clovia’s murder wasn’t random. It was a message.’

Loren’s mouth opened in a perfect circle.

Felix regurgitated how he’d spent the afternoon.

For the first time since they’d met, Loren kept silent, eyes round as coins.

‘I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t have proof,’ Felix said at last. He withdrew the letter, dog-eared from rough handling, and slapped it against Loren’s chest. ‘But I do now. I took this from the statesman – the one who wants the helmet.’

Loren caught the parchment before it slid. ‘You said you’d lie low. Not trespass into the house of the man hunting you down.’

‘Just read it.’

‘I’m surprised you know what it says.’

‘Aurelia helped.’ A muscle tightened in Felix’s jaw. ‘Read it.’

Painfully slow, Loren unfolded the letter and scanned the writing once. Twice.

‘But the names . . .’ His mouth tugged down.

‘Julia’s father, I know.’

Braid flopping, Loren shook his head. ‘Not who it’s from, who it’s for. You have no idea who you took this from, do you?’

‘I thought we were past the trespassing.’

‘Felix, you aren’t listening.’ Loren tapped the header. ‘ Sen. M. Servius R. He’s your statesman? The guard you recognised at the estate, are you certain he’s the same?’

‘He cut me with a sword. My memory is shit, but that’s not something you forget.’

Loren huffed and tucked loose hair behind his ear. ‘Senator Servius is powerful. You don’t understand. I met him today. He and Julia . . . she said they have history. I didn’t realise how much. Or how deep their feud goes.’

‘Murder-deep, apparently.’

‘Isis, this is bad.’ Slumping against the bricks, Loren pressed his palms into his eyes, weary as the world. ‘When you said a rich man was after you, I thought a merchant. A lower ordo at most. But a senator of Rome?’

‘Worse,’ said Felix. ‘He’s a smuggler. I recognise the phrasing. My guess is he failed to rope Julia’s father into his ring, and now Servius holds a grudge.’

‘Aurelia told me a story of an exiled smuggler, a man who wears gloves perpetually, who tried to move the helmet and was burned. I should’ve listened. Servius wore gloves at the games.’

‘No wonder he wants the helmet. Imagine what that would fetch on the market.’

‘If Servius had a true divine relic, I doubt he’d sell it off so easily.’

‘You think he’d use it.’ Felix kicked a crack in the wall. ‘Right. Who wouldn’t want more power?’

‘You wouldn’t.’ Loren dropped his hands and stared at Felix hard.

‘You would.’ Felix levelled his gaze. ‘Power abuses. You can’t trust anyone who has more than you.’

An agitated flush spread over Loren’s cheeks. ‘That isn’t true. A good politician should be someone you trust more than anything. Someone who acts for you. If they fail, you vote them out.’

‘Because it’s so easy to get rid of a bad politician.’

‘It isn’t a perfect system. But with the right intentions—’

‘Intentions? Loren, politicians don’t act for me.

They act for whoever has the deepest pockets.

And I’m worth nothing to either, not the council, not the rich folks funding them.

What am I worth to – oh, forget it.’ Felix couldn’t stomach listening to Loren defend a system that had never once given a damn about him.

Not again. Instead, he flicked the letter, still in Loren’s tight fist. ‘What will you do about that?’

The diversion worked. Deflating, Loren tried in vain to smooth the rumpled parchment. He read it again and sighed. ‘What choice do I have? I should warn Julia he’s after her. ’

‘You saw her face when she found Clovia. She already knows. I brought you this as proof that dealing with her is dangerous. Anything you think she might know about the helmet isn’t worth it. Find another way to figure it out or drop the matter. Whatever you have with Julia, end it now.’

‘She’s in danger, Felix. As her heir, it affects me, too.’

Loren might have continued speaking. He probably did. But Felix’s scope narrowed to a pinprick. Three words: as her heir .

‘Her heir?’ Felix breathed, cutting Loren off mid-sentence. ‘You signed?’

Loren shifted. An odd look came over him, glowing and proud and blushing for all the wrong reasons. ‘Not officially. Yet. You don’t have to care for politics, but what she offers—’

‘You said you wouldn’t. That you were only there for the helmet.’ Felix swallowed. ‘Gods, Loren. I thought you didn’t want to be controlled.’

‘Julia isn’t trying to control me. She’s – she’s like me.’

‘What, a liar? She snared you in her political mess. Sorry, is use a better word?’

‘Since when do you care?’ Loren snapped, eyes bright and damp.

It caught Felix off guard, yanked the cobblestones from under his feet. He’d made Loren cry. He shouldn’t have lashed out. He should apologise. It’d be simple. One of those easy gestures, the kind friends shared.

‘Fucked if I know,’ Felix said instead.

Loren’s lips parted in fleeting surprise, but his face turned to stone. With crisp, even motions, he folded the letter and tucked it in his toga. Shoving off from the wall, he headed for the alley’s exit.

‘Loren, I didn’t mean that,’ Felix tried. ‘No, I did. But I shouldn’t have said it.’

‘Whenever I start to think you’re halfway decent, you ruin it.’ Loren’s mouth tightened at the corner: his signature expression. Felix hated that he recognised it. ‘I’m going to find Julia. Take the coward’s way out if you want, but I don’t cut ties when a situation stops serving me.’

Shit . Felix watched helplessly as Loren was swallowed by the swarm of the Forum.

Lurking in the shade of the alley was far more comfortable than confronting .

. . that. After all, Felix wasn’t supposed to care.

But Loren had slotted into all his rules, easy as reaching back for a friend’s hand in a crowd so as not to be parted.

No one had ever reached for him before. Felix wasn’t ready to lose grip, even as he felt the fingers slipping away.

He thought back to the statesman – Senator Servius, rather. Darius sneaking from Julia’s estate. Clovia’s head bobbing in the atrium pool. And he thought of everything they could do to Loren now that he’d tangled with Julia.

Smugglers were bloody. And they never hesitated.

Shit . Felix steeled himself, then ran after Loren.

For a thief, a festival crowd was less a party and more an opportunity.

Felix’s father would take him to the Circus Maximus on festival days.

Not to celebrate. To pickpocket. They had a routine: little Felix, all curls and dimples, would scream that he’d lost his da’, and kind strangers would swamp him.

He’d be scooped up, cradled and comforted.

Then, tucked against their chest, he’d sneak his fingers into their pockets and rob them empty.

One of his few remaining memories of childhood.

Now that he was older, sharper, less dewy-cheeked, Felix adjusted his strategy. Preying on the generosity of middle-aged strangers didn’t work the same at seventeen. These days he looked for drunks with wide pockets .

Pity Felix didn’t have time for petty theft. Today in Pompeii, alcohol flowed free.

He scanned the crowd, shouldering through pressed bodies, all somewhere between sufficiently tipsy and absolutely blitzed.

Cups passed between hands and steady music thrummed beneath a current of excited babble.

Felix’s fingers ached to grab something.

Anything. Deep in his pocket, he found another marble, but a body jostled him, and he seized at the contact.

The marble slipped and bounced away between sandaled feet.

No more bribes for Aurelia.

Across the Forum, Felix caught a familiar shade of blue, the robes the attendants of Isis wore.

Camilia, short-haired and short-tempered, slumped on a set of crooked steps.

Felix hadn’t seen her since the Priest of Isis sliced his arm, but she and Loren were friends, right?

If anyone might talk sense into him, maybe she could.

He shifted directions, skirting a cluster of girls.

When he straightened, Camilia was no longer alone.

Curly hair and a tiny toga. Celsi again, the fussy boy, and his hand was cupped around Camilia’s ear in the way children believed inconspicuous. Her brow scrunched.

Felix stilled. Not wise in the crowded Forum.

More bodies bumped him, and a gaggle of children half Aurelia’s age did their best to bowl him over.

He stumbled, skin itching. Camilia and Celsi’s duo turned into a trio.

A middle-aged man, skin the same olive as Celsi’s, stormed over.

He grabbed Celsi by the arm and jerked him away.