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Loren carefully extracted himself from Felix’s grasp before he did something foolish, like melt into it for ever, and fumbled to right his stool.

This was the breaking point. Nonna’s trailed-off accusation had, once again, pushed Felix too far, and now the conversation must end, still no answers given. Still no nearer to their aim.

Then Felix surprised him. With his foot, he dragged the other stool closer to Loren’s and sat. Sat so their arms brushed, tiny, temporary contact. Loren’s breath caught, pulse tapping fast.

Permission.

Loren turned to Nonna, swallowing thickly. ‘ Unless he had already been touched by the divine. A priest’s blessing, maybe.’

‘Or a curse. The life of a mortal who has caught the eye of a god is no easy path. They cease to be human and turn into a tool. An object to be manipulated.’

‘Strangely enough,’ Felix said, ‘I still feel plenty human. ’

‘Then Mercury is not through with you yet,’ Nonna warned.

‘The helmet is called dangerous for a reason. For three hundred years, it has not moved, not since Rome thought it a fair exchange for stamping out my Etruscan ancestors in their own city. What energy do you think that bears? How many souls of the restless dead it holds? I have no answer for why you could take it, but gods, I fear the fallout.’

‘Unless,’ Loren repeated, ‘I could find the answer. What if I stopped the consequences before they started? Where would I look?’

‘Your brand of curiosity could spark a war. I pray you have thought this through. I pray he is worth the risk.’ She lowered her hand, but Loren knew better than to trust. Old Etruscan grandmothers struck faster than a snake. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything,’ Loren said breathlessly. ‘Tell me – us – everything.’

‘Even I do not know all ends,’ Nonna said. ‘But I will tell you where to search.’

Getting through the gate proved the easiest feat of the day.

The two flustered, baby-faced guards were already overwhelmed by a merchant disgruntled over their search through his cabbage cart.

All Loren had to do was explain he and Felix were disciples of Isis on the way to burn the linens of a plague victim before the guards exchanged fearful glances and ushered them through.

A dirty trick to be sure, but an effective one.

Leaving Pompeii always felt like kissing it goodbye.

As if once Loren strayed too far from its gates, they would never open for him again.

Being on the road meant he had no walls to hide behind.

Still, he pushed on, with a wanted thief at his heels, an obscenely powerful artefact tucked in a laundry bag, and desperation clawing his spine with every step.

He hoped there would still be a Pompeii to return to come morning .

‘How much further?’ Felix asked. He lagged several paces behind, kicking small stones at Loren’s calves.

Another pebble struck. Loren rolled his eyes but didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Nonna said it’s perhaps a half-hour walk from the gate. Have we walked a half hour?’

Felix’s sulk was audible. ‘No.’

‘Then you have your answer.’ Loren made the mistake of glancing back. ‘Do you . . .’

He hated the way his words faltered.

Out here, Felix wore no headscarf, and daylight transformed his copper curls into flaming laurels and lit his skin gold. He looked like a young Apollo in the prime of his life, fast and clever and fierce. Loren ached to bask in his sun, soak it up before it dipped behind cloud once more.

He only tore away when he stumbled over a rock. His arms flailed to reclaim balance, barely catching himself before he fell. These damned weak ankles would be the death of him.

‘Careful,’ Felix said with a snort. ‘If you twist an ankle, I’m not carrying you back.’

A flicked stone smacked Loren’s heel to drive the point home.

Loren sighed and stared at Vesuvius ahead, crisp against the pale sky, clouds ringing the peak. The day really was beautiful, despite the heat, the bare hint of a breeze rustling fields of wilting poppies and tall grass.

Shame they were due to spend the afternoon underground.

Ahead, a pair of crooked standing stones peeked through a cluster of pines, exactly as Nonna said to look out for. Loren veered off-road. Weeds crunched underfoot.

‘The Etruscans raised stones like these near important places,’ he said. ‘Places charged with energy. I bet we’re close. Is the helmet . . .’

‘Reacting?’ Felix arched a sceptical brow. ‘No.’

Loren fought for a smile. ‘Then we aren’t close enough.’

Beyond the stones, the underbrush opened into a bowl-shaped grove, hewn from the hillside and concealed by overgrown trees. Mist clung stagnant to the branches, the grass. A stillness lingered here, one Loren wasn’t keen to disturb.

‘Through there?’ Felix nodded to the back of the grove, where a jagged gash in the hill begged exploration. ‘Give me the torch.’

Before they left, Nonna had pressed a leather satchel of essentials into Loren’s hands. Now he passed the tools to Felix, and a moment of fussing fingers later, the torch flared to life. Loren said a silent goodbye to the breeze.

Together, they ducked into darkness.

The tunnel stretched for ever. Loren held the torch aloft, illuminating a scant few feet in front and behind, but otherwise they might as well be walking into Tartarus itself.

His anxiety spiked with every pop of the flame.

People weren’t made for this, lurking in suffocating tunnels.

Foul things made their homes underground, monsters and beasts.

A place to hide wrongdoings from the watchful gods.

Fitting, maybe. Loren had been doing a lot of wrong lately.

‘The air’s clammy,’ Felix said, cracking the quiet. Loren startled, nearly dropping the torch. ‘Can you smell that?’

Loren inhaled, in part to settle his racing heart. ‘Doesn’t smell unusual to me. Musty, perhaps.’

‘Well, you’d be used to it. Pompeii stinks, like eggs left to rot. Not so bad in town, but on the road, it got worse. Down here it’s intolerable. And the walls hum, can’t you hear?’

Loren frowned. ‘Just how sensitive are you?’

‘Too. Hard to filter out the chatter.’ Felix sighed and briefly squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Whatever the cause is, let’s hope we don’t find it.’

Again, the uncomfortable silence.

These were the final hours before Felix would leave town.

Loren knew he should savour them, but a mental wall had gone up between rational thought and acting normal, gods, Loren, can’t you act normal?

The disconnect panged. He’d kissed Felix.

Kissed him. And despite the distortion of the wine, Loren was certain . . .

Felix had kissed him back. But Loren didn’t have a great record for kissing boys and keeping them. Tomorrow, Felix would leave. Would he look back once he’d cleared the gate?

The torchlight cast shifting shadows on the rough rock ceiling to match the stir of his stomach. Loren released a shaky breath in the dark.

Unfortunately, Felix took it as an invitation to talk.

‘So,’ he started, a valiant attempt at sounding casual. ‘Lucius Lassius Lorenus. Interesting name.’

Loren dropped his gaze forward, glaring at the smothering dark. ‘It’s mine. What of it?’

‘I know better than to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong—’

‘Could have fooled me.’

‘But that’s quite the secret. You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’

Sweat dampened Loren’s braid. He turned sideways to shimmy between the tunnel wall and an outcropping. ‘You saw through me from the start. Rich boy playing at being poor. Why hand you another arrow for your quiver?’

Felix hummed. ‘Strange to give that up in exchange for scraps.’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Help me to.’

Loren chanced a glance back. Felix’s face wasn’t mocking, but he almost wished it were.

Anything would be easier than this. ‘I told you that night at Julia’s, there are expectations of me.

My parents have a framework for how the world ought to work.

They don’t tolerate much beyond it. When you’re Lucius Lassius’s son, there’s no room for being different. ’

He wet his lips, then added, ‘Four years with the Temple of Isis got me nowhere. Umbrius and the council wanted nothing to do with me until I caught Julia’s eye, and you saw how that ended.

I ran from home when I was twelve. Now on the edge of seventeen, I’ve done nothing to cement myself in Pompeii to stop my father dragging me back. ’

‘Your father knows you came here?’

‘You don’t become one of the wealthiest men in the empire without connections.

He has eyes everywhere. He’s indulged me, letting me stay this long.

’ Loren’s thoughts were scrambled. He tried to sort through them, order them in a way Felix might understand.

‘My father has no other heir. Unlike Julia, he’d rather be run over by the Roman cavalry than have the Lassius name passed to someone not of his blood. He needs me trapped.’

‘Would that be so terrible?’

‘To have no say in your life? To have everything about you dictated, from the way you wear your hair to who you sleep with? To restrict your world to a few acres of land when you know you could do more, if only they’d listen? Yes, Felix. It would.’

Silence. The torch flared.

‘See,’ said Felix, ‘that’s where we differ. I’d give anything to have what you gave up. Stability. Something certain. A home.’

‘It was never a home to me.’

‘Easy to say when you chose to walk away.’

Loren swallowed, eyes stinging. He blinked rapidly, but his vision blurred.

‘But I meant it,’ Felix said. ‘You aren’t going back there.’

He had no idea how dangerous it was to say things like that. Had Loren not been on the verge of tears or holding a flaming stick in a dark, smelly tunnel, he might have confessed how afraid he was to add Felix to his list of burned bridges.

Gods, Loren was sick of losing.

Another beat of silence.

Felix asked, ‘Is it me, or did it get lighter? ’