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Chapter XVIII

LOREN

M orning brought Loren two things: a hangover and the sick realisation that the world moved on. How could it, when Loren knew how Felix’s mouth tasted, had felt the planes of his chest under his palm? It should’ve been impossible. Everything had changed.

But when Loren woke, sunlight blaring through the shutters, to find Felix standing at the door, a third realisation hit: Loren had messed up spectacularly.

Their four days ended tomorrow. Tomorrow, Felix would leave.

Loren stood on unsteady legs, forcing back nausea, head throbbing dully.

Julia’s toga still swaddled him, a suffocating mass of crinkled, wine-stained wool, and he fumbled for the pin.

Distant-but-still-too-close memories teased him of Felix hauling him up the stairs, putting him to bed, unstrapping his shoes. Of Loren drowning in Felix’s curls.

If these were the memories Loren still held, what didn’t he remember?

He groaned and clutched his abdomen.

‘If you plan on vomiting,’ Felix said, offering out Mercury’s helmet, upside down, ‘aim for this.’

Loren glared.

Felix pulled it back. ‘It was a joke. ’

There was no saving the moment once it passed. Loren stumbled to the washbasin, expecting to see days-old water with a veneer of soap scum, but found a fresh bowl instead. ‘Did you—’

‘Wash up,’ Felix snapped, ears burning red. ‘You slept half the morning away. I want to leave before night comes around again.’

Comprehension dawned as Loren reached for a washcloth. Felix held the helmet.

Panic seized him. ‘But it’s too early. You promised four days.’

‘Not leave . I want . . . I hoped you and I could . . .’ Felix ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

‘I’m tired of hidden truths. Of others knowing more about me than I do.

You said I’m the only person who can touch the helmet.

I’ll hold to my promise to return it tomorrow, I swear.

But first I want to know why I was able to take it at all. ’

‘You want to help.’ Loren blinked.

Wasn’t this what he wanted? He should be excited Felix might stop avoiding questions.

But Loren’s stomach churned all over again at the way Felix clutched the helmet to his chest. He wanted to figure Felix out, but he’d been terrified of Felix figuring out himself.

Flashing visions lurked behind his eyelids.

Black wave. Copper streak. Ghost-Felix at the crux.

The helmet was there at the end of the world, connected to Felix. Learning more would come with a cost.

Except Loren was already doomed, though not by any silver helmet. By a smart mouth and stormy eyes and his ring still on Felix’s finger.

‘I don’t know how much I believe,’ Felix admitted. ‘About what you say the helmet can do. But if I’m not allowed to understand anything else about my life, I’m willing to try to believe. I need you to show me how.’

Loren had been selfish. He couldn’t deny Felix this. All Loren’s work figuring out what the helmet foretold so far had been done alone – all amounting to nothing. Maybe a different approach was needed .

One that required Felix’s cooperation.

Downstairs, Elias was awake and stretching in the corridor between cubicles, his back a perfect arch. When he spotted them, he dropped with a wicked smile.

‘Sleep late? It’s near noon,’ he said. ‘Glad you made it home, Loren. You had Felix all out of sorts.’

It shouldn’t have stung, but it did, the idea that Felix had confessed anything to Elias.

‘Yes, and now we’re leaving,’ Loren replied, clipped. He ushered Felix hastily towards the exit, Felix seeming all too happy to comply, tying on a scarf and escaping to the street.

‘Wait,’ Elias called before Loren could follow. ‘Stay a moment. These days, it seems like you’re always leaving. We never talk anymore.’

Loren closed his eyes. Turned, smile tight. ‘I see you daily.’

Elias didn’t return the smile.

‘Three years. That’s how long I’ve known you.

’ Elias rose slowly. At his full height, he barely met Loren’s chin.

He scrutinised Loren, stepping right into his space.

Such proximity used to swoop Loren’s stomach, but now he only felt tired.

‘So why is it that I understand Felix better in three days?’

Loren could think of a lot of reasons, like how Elias and Felix had more in common with each other than with a rich winemaker’s son, or that Loren had tried to get closer to him and was swiftly shut down, but he had the sense neither would prove sufficient.

He sighed. ‘What do you want?’

‘I thought he was the one I should worry about,’ Elias continued, ‘but I wonder if I should reconsider. Between the two of you, you’re the one with ambition. You’re the one I can picture wearing wings.’

The accusation cracked like a hit to the jaw, and Loren would have preferred a physical blow. Any surprise he should have felt that Elias knew about the helmet was an afterthought. Dropping his voice, he hissed, ‘You think I’d use it? For myself?’

‘Use it? Or use him?’

‘I’m trying to help the city.’

‘And I’m trying to warn you,’ Elias said. He caught Loren’s wrist and jerked him in. For a deluded second, Loren thought Elias was going for a kiss, they were that close. ‘I’m telling you to be careful. For his sake, too.’

‘What do you want?’ Loren repeated, except it spilled out as a plea.

Abruptly, he missed Elias with a scorching ache.

They stood sharing breath, but Loren had never felt the distance so keenly – though it had been him who drove the wedge home.

After admitting his feelings and facing rejection, Loren thought creating space was a favour, a sacrifice on his part, but he never thought to ask Elias what he wanted.

Loren couldn’t shake the feeling that time was running out to make amends.

When this was all over, he would fix what was broken.

‘I told you a long time ago,’ Elias said at last. He let go and took a measured step back. ‘I want nothing from you.’

If Felix overheard anything, he had the tact not to mention it when Loren stumbled outside.

Neither spoke as they set off. The laundry bag swung from Felix’s shoulder, helmet nestled inside.

They almost passed as normal friends doing normal chores on a normal day, except Felix was drawn tight as a lyre string, and Loren had never felt so messy in his life.

Discomfort swelled between them, worse than the intense morning heat.

‘We should start with Nonna,’ Loren managed to say. ‘Pompeii has no library, but she’s Etruscan to her core, the first settlers of the city from before Rome’s sack on Corinth. If anyone knows the helmet’s history, she will.’

‘I believe you that she won’t turn us in. That doesn’t mean I trust her.’

‘Trust me, then.’ Loren sidestepped to let a basket-bearing man squeeze past, and Felix tensed when it brought them too near. ‘Last time you didn’t like what she had to say, and I kept pushing the issue. I won’t do that again. If you say stop, we leave.’

‘I am not fragile,’ Felix insisted, then averted his gaze further, a feat Loren hadn’t thought possible.

There he went, putting his foot in his mouth again.

Half the city was still sleeping off its hangover, but Nonna sat outside the bakery, moulding dough into rounds. When she saw them, her eyes lit up.

‘Loren, sweet sparrow.’ Nonna let Loren kiss her smiling cheeks, her face soft and creased as fresh dough. ‘Sit, sit. You and the shifty one. Help me knead.’

She moved a basket off a second stool, and Loren procured a third from the shop. Felix looked like he would rather stay standing, ready to flee at the slightest whiff of burnt bread, but Nonna shot him a stern glare and he acquiesced, arms tight around his middle.

Nonna put Loren to work stretching a lump of dough, repetitive, mindless work that numbed his lingering headache.

Flour coated his hands and dusted his face.

In another life, he could be a baker. Forget politics and priesthood, vineyards and visions, and become Nonna’s apprentice.

He’d live out of her storage closet, and she’d teach him to bake, and he wouldn’t have to cut his hair or move home or marry.

‘Don’t lie to Nonna, now,’ she started after a measure of comfortable quiet where her eyes didn’t leave Felix once, ‘because I see it in both your faces. You got yourselves in trouble.’

Loren watched her wrinkled hands expertly fold her loaf. He bit his lip and copied her tucks, but his came out lumpy. ‘We may have caused the trouble. I need you to help us out of it.’

‘Use your wrists more. Like that. Good.’ Nonna hummed. ‘I suspected so, the moment I first saw you two together. You attract trouble like flies to honey, sparrow. ’

Puffing his cheeks, Loren chanced a glance at Felix, who still sat coiled tight. Now or never . Before he could change his mind, he plunged. ‘Nonna, what would it take to steal Mercury’s helmet? And what might one use it for, once they had it?’

A beat of silence. Then a flour-powdered pinch bit his cheek. Dropping the dough, Loren clapped his hand to his stinging face.

‘Tell me you didn’t, boy. Tell me you had nothing to do with it.’ Nonna went in for a second pinch and, in his haste to avoid it, Loren toppled off his stool. Cobblestones rushed to meet him.

Arms caught under his. Loren stared, dumbstruck. He hadn’t seen Felix move, but he’d flown to stop the fall faster than the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. A slow blush crept down Loren’s chest.

‘It wasn’t Loren,’ Felix said, voice carved cold.

‘Yet the company he keeps reflects on him. Humans are not meant to fiddle with divine power.’ Nonna sat back, seething. ‘Unless . . .’

Felix’s jaw clenched.