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Chapter XVI

LOREN

L oren was split between two realities, this world and –

Cobblestones digging into his knees. Heat blazing on his back. Acrid air searing his lungs.

A swallow of black.

Copper ducking into silver. Slipping the helmet on.

White.

This world, and the one where he died. Images flickered in and out, switching between her vision and the festival crowd. Loren couldn’t tether himself to either. He felt . . .

‘Take his hand,’ Aurelia rasped, glassy eyes a thousand miles away. ‘Take it.’

Fingers gripped his wrist.

Pulled.

Felix’s ghostly face shattered.

Loren tore his palm from Aurelia’s cheek with a cutting gasp, fingers blistering. She wavered where she knelt, as if she might tip sideways. He’d never seen her do this before. Not once.

Hysteria choked him. ‘What does that mean? What are you trying to show me?’

He didn’t know who he asked. Aurelia, the gods, did it matter ?

‘Loren,’ she whispered. ‘He was there. I see you, too.’

‘What’ – his voice broke – ‘am I doing?’

But Aurelia only shook her head. ‘Loren, I think . . .’

‘ Aurelia .’

She looked at him with a sadness far beyond her years. ‘You can’t stop the fire.’

‘No.’ Loren recoiled. ‘No.’

Of all the things Aurelia could have said, that burned the worst. All his years spent toiling in Pompeii, facing dead ends and mockery by day and murder and catastrophe in his dreams, but Loren was doomed to fail anyway. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

Felix said something. Something urgent. Worried. But it was as if Loren were submerged in a bath, head underwater, all sounds muffled except for Aurelia’s sombre tone, alone in a bubble all their own.

‘ Loren! ’

His ears popped. Music, laughter, talking.

It came back in a sudden rush: where they were, who they were, the fact that Felix was gripping Loren’s shoulders tightly, stopping him from slumping.

Felix’s hands seared imprints into Loren’s skin, through the layers of fabric.

He wanted to lean into it, let Felix hold him here, grounded, for ever.

They didn’t have for ever, and Felix wasn’t his to keep.

Loren lurched up, knees shaking, dimly aware he pushed Felix off him, and his dizzy mind mourned for the lost contact. People gawked. Of course they did, he’d had a fit in the middle of a festival. When he glanced down, Aurelia had slipped from his side like she’d never been there to begin with.

‘What happened? What did you see?’ Felix asked. For the first time since Loren had jolted back to reality, he looked at Felix properly. Felix’s skin had drained of colour, grey eyes urgent. He was scared. It looked all wrong on his face.

They’d been dancing, Felix’s hand on Loren’s waist .

Loren swallowed, throat parched. Too late, he realised he was staring. Face burning, he dropped his gaze to the ground. Thoughts raced, tripping over each other. He needed something to do. Something to centre the energy boiling inside him before he burst.

‘I need to find Julia,’ he blurted, then dived into the crowd, desperate for distance. To keep his fingers from shaking, he braided his hair. Picked it apart. Started over. Voices raged in his mind, all demanding attention. Aurelia. Julia. The letter. A city on fire. Felix’s hand on his waist .

The memory replayed over and over, a tune Loren couldn’t put from his head. What had he been thinking, getting distracted by a dance like that? Distracted by Felix, the boy Loren used to fear? Maybe Loren’s father was right. His brain was addled beyond hope.

In Loren’s dreams, Felix always died. He started the fire.

Now Loren knew how: by wearing the helmet.

He wasn’t working fast enough to solve Felix’s mystery. He needed something he could fix right now . Something straightforward, to get Servius off Felix’s back for just a moment. Something like the letter.

Julia stood outside Apollo’s temple, speaking with one of the councilmen. Rather, the councilman spoke. For her part, Julia merely watched, bored. When she caught Loren’s approach, she brushed the councilman aside and slipped away.

‘My brain nearly oozed from my ears listening to him,’ Julia said. ‘Gossip about that helmet, as if that helps the situation.’ She squinted. ‘Are you ill?’

‘I need to speak with you,’ Loren said. ‘It’s urgent.’

‘Urgent?’ Glancing over Loren’s shoulder, her smile soured. ‘Ah. Your pet is here, too.’

Loren couldn’t bear to look back at Felix for fear he’d vanish, Eurydice in the Orpheus story. If he never looked, never wanted, Felix couldn’t be taken from him .

‘Felix found something,’ Loren said. ‘It concerns your father.’

Her posture changed, hand dropping from Loren’s elbow, spine straightening. Warm Julia disappeared. Statue Julia took her place.

‘I see,’ she said, chilly as a winter sea storm. ‘Come with me.’

‘Mention this to nobody,’ Umbrius warned as he handed Julia the key to his study, eyeing Loren and Felix hovering behind her. ‘A woman in the office. Unspeakable.’

She offered a tight smile and led the way inside. The small study was too cramped to be called cosy, but private enough. A desk and pair of chairs crowded the space. Along the back wall, a shelf held a pitcher and goblets, perfect for men settling in to play a long game of politics.

Julia sank into Umbrius’s spot. Loren chose the seat opposite.

Felix, after a lengthy pause, perched on the arm of Loren’s chair, and Loren did his best to ignore his fluttering insides.

He had to play it cool. More skittish cat than boy, Felix was warming to him. One wrong move and Felix would bolt.

‘We won’t have much time,’ said Julia. ‘Show me what you found.’

Loren passed the letter over. She skimmed it, stony face not shifting. When she reached the end, she tossed it on the desk with a dismissive wrist flick.

‘Is this all?’

‘No,’ said Loren. ‘Felix saw Servius’s guard moments before he—’

‘Found Clovia,’ Julia finished. ‘I’m aware of Servius’s techniques, believe me.’

‘But at the games—’

‘Yes, I knew then, too. Hold your protest, Loren.’ She busied herself decanting wine. ‘There’s more to this story than you can possibly predict. ’

Julia plucked a scroll from a basket under the desk and unfurled it, a portion of a map.

She weighed three corners with her filled goblet and two apples, leaving the fourth to curl back over the sea.

Finally, she withdrew a pouch, concealed by the drape of her dress, and emptied out a scatter of coins.

‘Our friend has hands in more places than you realise.’ She set to work arranging the coins, placing them one by one over points on the map.

Loren recognised some of the cities. Rome, their capital. Surrentum. Stabiae. Even Salernum. Then Julia began filling in the gaps, setting coins over places even Loren, with his education in trade, hadn’t heard of. Two dozen markers soon cluttered the map.

‘A pattern,’ Felix said, flushing when both Loren and Julia looked up in surprise. ‘Look. Rome in the centre. The coins surrounding it.’

‘Keen observation,’ Julia said, not quite begrudgingly. Her eyes slid to Loren. ‘Perhaps your dog does have a brain.’

Felix’s lip curled. Loren shot a warning glare, and Felix slouched back against the chair.

‘Anything Servius wants, he will stop at nothing to get.’ Julia placed a final pair of coins over Pompeii and Herculaneum, side by side, as though covering a corpse’s eyes for passage to the underworld. ‘What he wants is this city in his pocket.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Loren said. ‘His end goal is what? To be elected here? You said he’s from Rome.’

Julia snorted. ‘Pompeii could crumble into the sea tomorrow and Servius wouldn’t flinch.

No use drizzling shit with honey. He hates this city.

Hates it for holding him hostage here. He crept onto the councils of these other towns, swayed the vote, and turned them obedient to the capital within months.

Pompeii has held out for four years. Do you think that endears us to him? ’

‘He should leave,’ Loren said hotly. ‘If he thinks so poorly of us. ’

‘He has nowhere to go. The emperor won’t allow him to return to Rome until he fulfils the conditions of his sentence. Servius has been in exile for six years.’

Felix scoffed. ‘Most smugglers aren’t let off so easily.’

‘You know about his hobby? You keep surprising me. But yes, why is anyone ever exiled? You fall from good grace but are too important to assassinate. A useful strategy to keep yourself alive, I’ll allow him that.

Servius entangled himself with a smuggling guild and got caught with his hand in the honeypot.

Former Emperor Vespasian offered a deal – bring the colonised towns in line, and Servius would see his station restored. ’

‘Raising taxes,’ Felix said. ‘He’s one of Rome’s envoys.’

‘I track the council’s votes,’ Loren said. ‘Session after session, the answer hasn’t changed.’

‘Hasn’t changed yet,’ Julia corrected, ‘because I have stood in the way every time.’

‘You – of course.’ Loren sat back and studied the map. ‘Your estate gives you sway with Umbrius and the council. And if you continue pressuring against a vote to raise taxes, Servius can’t leave. It’s an impasse.’

‘When Servius faces an impasse, does he strike you as the type to relent? To bargain?’ Julia grabbed her goblet, relieving its duty as a map weight, and swallowed a mouthful of wine. The freed parchment corner curled. ‘I’m afraid it’s more complicated.’

‘Then what is it?’ Felix snapped. ‘I hate politics. Life ought to be yes or no, none of this complicated shit.’

Julia arched a brow, unamused. ‘You wouldn’t survive a day in Rome.’

‘I survived eleven years in Rome.’

‘Yet you’re here, meddling in the politics you despise.’

Felix muttered a series of barely audible curses. The hem of his tunic brushed Loren’s elbow .