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Lowering the torch and squinting only worsened Loren’s headache. ‘How could you possibly tell?’

‘Maybe your eyesight is shit.’

‘Maybe you’re full of . . .’ Loren bit his tongue and wheeled around, scowling. ‘I don’t curse. Stop trying to make me.’

‘You said “fuck” last night.’

That smirk was insufferable. Loren wanted to shove Felix against the wall. Better yet, have Felix crowd Loren in, press their chests together and—

He kept walking.

But maddeningly, Felix was right. Not a full minute later, Loren realised he could make out the texture of the wall beyond the torch’s reach.

What had started as a handful of degrees became a shock of brightness as they emerged from the dark into an open-air pit.

Stone spires jutted from the ground, crooked as broken fingers and riddled with minuscule, blistered pockmarks.

‘Oh.’ Loren’s hand shot to his mouth, and the torch dropped, sputtering and rolling. Vertigo rushed over him, like the wooziness he felt before slipping into a vision, but he remained fixed in the present. He grasped for the wall. ‘This place is horrible. I feel . . .’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Felix murmured, stepping past and entering the chamber proper.

‘I have,’ Loren realised with a jolt. ‘I dreamed it the other night. You were there, too, but we stood at the top. I thought we were at the edge of the world, and when I looked down, I saw only . . . teeth.’

How mad he must sound. Verbalising his dreams was an exercise in explaining things he barely understood himself. Usually best if he said nothing at all. But here he was, spilling his guts to Felix, who must already think him deranged.

Felix ran a hand up pockmarked stone. ‘They weren’t teeth. What else did you see? ’

Something in his tone rattled Loren too close to honesty. He blurted, ‘Nothing. This is last night’s wine talking.’

‘Loren. What did you see?’

‘You said I was close to the answer,’ Loren said in a rush. ‘That I held the pieces.’ And asked who I’d run through with a blade . Me or you. He swallowed.

‘Do you dream about me a lot?’

It should have been an innuendo. Any other time, it would have been. But for all Felix’s lewd comments, his question didn’t ridicule. It said I believe you . And I trust you to tell me the truth . A spark ran the length of Loren’s limbs, heat blooming in his belly despite the chill of the pit.

‘Yes,’ he breathed.

Felix’s clever eyes met his. ‘Before you met me.’

‘How did you know?’

‘When you saw me in the temple, that first morning.’ Felix stepped closer, sandals crunching silt. ‘You weren’t surprised I was there, but that I was there at that moment.’

‘For the record, I’m sorry for hitting you with the bowl.’

Felix was near enough to touch. In the dreams, he’d stepped in until their noses nearly brushed. Loren remembered how breathless he’d felt and found – desperately – he wanted to gasp for it again.

‘In your dreams,’ Felix said, ‘what do I do?’

The moment, like so many fragile things, shattered. Loren bit his tongue and tripped away, needing the distance. Felix’s gaze tracked Loren as he edged around the chamber, still waiting for answers. Tell him , whispered the ghost lurking in Loren’s shadow, but he forced him back into the dark.

Then he did what he did best: he started talking and simply didn’t stop.

‘This is like a place from a myth, where a great fire or flood swept through and carved these tunnels out.’ Loren traced tiny stone divots.

‘ It makes sense why Nonna told us to take the helmet here. The old settlers of the land worshipped Mercury in strange places like this. Places where the veil between the living and the dead thins, where it’s easy to believe he could flit among humans.

Bring us messages in ways other gods cannot. ’

Messages from ghosts, though the thought stirred sour. He had meant ‘Ghost-Felix’ as a nickname, a way to differentiate between real and unreal, but now . . .

His heart stuck in his throat, a pained lump.

No. Felix was alive. One only needed look at his glow as proof.

‘How does the helmet feel now?’ Loren asked, half dreading the answer. ‘Is it telling you anything?’

The question felt foolish the moment he asked, but Felix obediently unslung the laundry bag and pressed his palm against silver. He closed his eyes, listening, sensing. Loren held his breath.

But Felix shook his head. ‘I still think Nonna is full of it.’

Loren’s laugh bounced empty around the spires. ‘I thought you said you wanted to give believing a try.’

‘Loren, I . . .’ Felix’s mouth flattened. ‘Forget it.’

‘No, tell me.’

Felix’s thumb worried the bag strap. When he spoke, it was carefully even. Forced control, swallowed emotion. ‘Your belief is so easy. Your feelings are so easy. I don’t understand it.’

‘Why wouldn’t they be? Trust is easy.’ Loren frowned. ‘What made you lose yours?’

For a moment, Felix bore the expression of someone who badly wanted to confess. As if the words hovered on his tongue, dying to plunge. Loren waited, ready to dive with him.

‘Forget it.’ Felix looked away. Then he paused. The bag hit the ground with a soft thud and he strode for the centre of the pit. ‘Did you drop this?’

When he straightened, he held a knife. Wood. Iron.

Loren felt the blood drain from his face.

‘Funny,’ Felix said. ‘I took a knife like this off someone days ago, but I lost it.’

‘Common enough design. Coincidence.’

‘You say that an awful lot for someone who doesn’t believe in those,’ Felix teased, then his lips twitched down. He held the blade to the light, tilting it this way and that. ‘I swear the etching was the same. Almost looks like the mountain.’

Daring to inch nearer, Loren squinted at the afternoon sun reflecting off the blade, catching on an engraved squiggle: an inverted V with a cratered top.

You are close to the answer , Ghost-Felix had said in the dream.

Loren’s eyes drifted up. From the bottom of the chamber, he could only see only its crown, a silhouette ringed with clouds. The mark could be any mountain, really.

Except Ghost-Felix had dropped this knife here for a reason.

Had said, If you want to stop this, come and find me.

The realisation struck in a sting of lightning, a blast of steam, quicksilver eyes locking on a target – a target that had been there all along.

The mountain, at the edges of Loren’s dreams. The mountain under a red storm.

Always the one constant. Frustration mounted in his chest, swirled with the flush of an answer at hand.

Years of taunting visions were about to end.

‘Remember when you said you don’t believe in fate?’ Loren murmured.

‘Fate can fuck itself.’

‘In my dreams, I see a mountain.’

Felix stepped closer, following Loren’s stare. ‘Don’t say what I feel you’re about to say.’

‘I think,’ Loren said regardless, ‘I know where to go next.’