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Chapter III

FELIX

F elix woke to a sharp headache, an acrid tongue and a weight on his chest.

He knew the reason for the first, and he smacked his lips a few times to place the taste of the second. The third took his throbbing skull a moment, but he found the answer inches from his nose, where two yellow eyes glinted back.

‘Piss off, cat,’ Felix said. Tried to say. He wriggled, but the cat stayed put. Damn thing was heavier than a cat had any right to be. Gods, his head hurt.

He took stock of his situation. Horizontal, as expected.

On a soft chaise, less expected. The room was silent and dim, but his vision adjusted quickly.

The style of bricks suggested the building was much older than the statesman’s house, meaning Felix hadn’t been given back to Darius following the bowl attack.

Somehow, that didn’t make him feel better.

He suspected he wouldn’t feel anything but uncomfortable until he was far from Pompeii’s gates.

Too much had happened here. Too many people acted like they knew him.

A low rumble broke the quiet and, for a bleary moment, Felix wondered if the earth was shaking again. But it was only the cat, calm and content and shaped like a bread loaf, blinking slow. Felix was at a loss.

He blinked back.

A door creaked.

‘You’ve met Castor,’ a familiar voice said. Too familiar, given that he’d only spoken two words before snuffing Felix’s lights out. ‘The Egyptians believed cats see what humans can’t. Is it a good sign he’s taken to you so readily?’

‘Here to finish me off? Seeing how the bowl and the’ – Felix smacked his lips once more to be certain – ‘poison didn’t do the job?’

The boy moved into the orange glow of a sconce, casting his olive skin warm.

Tall and thin with half his face still veiled, he was unmistakably the lunatic from the cella steps, though he’d lost the scarf swathing his head.

Long dark hair lay braided over his shoulder.

He wore the garments of a low-ranking temple worker and held a covered basket.

‘Poppy sap can’t kill you.’

‘You would be surprised,’ Felix said darkly. Twice in a matter of hours it’d been used against him in Pompeii. Maybe everybody in this backwater shithole lacked creativity.

The boy sighed and shut the door softly, closing them in.

Felix repressed twisting unease. Being trapped with a stranger, in a temple no less, went against everything he’d ever learned.

He brushed his hand down Castor’s back, eyeing the boy, who took a steadying breath, then tiptoed to crouch by the chaise.

It took all Felix’s resolve not to cringe at the closeness.

At a cluck of the boy’s tongue, Castor leaped off Felix’s chest and slunk from sight.

Whatever. Felix didn’t miss the weight.

‘We don’t have much time before the others realise you’re awake,’ the boy said, half-muffled by his veil. From his basket, he withdrew a dish of fat purple grapes, glistening damp. ‘I brought you these, and bandages for your legs. ’

Felix’s mouth watered. He hadn’t eaten in ages, and he had a fondness for grapes besides, regardless of their stage of fermentation. Still, he hesitated. This boy had bashed in Felix’s head, yet now tempted him with niceties. It didn’t add up.

Kindness came with limits. If not a limit, a price. Who knew what the boy might demand in exchange for a handful of grapes?

‘Not hungry,’ Felix lied. ‘Can I go?’

The boy set the dish at the foot of the chaise. ‘I can tend your wounds, if you want.’

‘I don’t,’ Felix said, the truth this time. ‘Can I go?’

With another huff, the boy scrutinised Felix’s face.

His searching expression, like trying to solve a puzzle, made Felix’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth.

It reminded him of how guards judged him on sight alone, wanting to pin him with any number of crimes if only because of his threadbare tunic and shifty disposition.

Whatever the boy looked for, he didn’t seem pleased with what he found.

‘Question for question,’ he declared. ‘To answer yours, no. You can’t leave. Not until we’re finished with you. But I’ll let you ask another.’

How generous. Body aching, Felix sat up. It was worth the pain not to be prone under a stranger’s gaze. ‘Fine. Do you have a name?’

The boy blinked. ‘That’s what you most want to know?’

‘Is that your question?’

‘ No .’ Above his veil, across the bridge of his freckled nose, spilled a deep red flush. ‘My name is Loren.’

Satisfaction spread through Felix’s chest. He didn’t care much for rules beside his own.

Following rules didn’t mean shit when you were bleeding out in an alley.

But he did hold tight to something his father had drilled into him when he was small: learn the names of those you deal with . Know whose name to thank .

More importantly, whose name to curse. Cursing Loren would taste especially delicious when Felix escaped.

‘Your turn.’ Only the slightest bit smug, Felix began wrapping the gashes on his legs.

Loren cast him an icy look at odds with the lingering fluster still on his face. ‘I want to be in this situation even less than you do, believe it or not –’

‘Not.’

‘ – but the only way out is through.’ Loren seemed to be reassuring himself more than Felix. He tugged off his veil to reveal a wary indent at the corner of his bow-shaped mouth. ‘You didn’t stumble into the temple by accident. What drew you here?’

Felix paused tying the bandages to stare in disbelief. ‘I don’t know where here is. Tell me that much, and maybe we can work out the rest.’

‘You ran in. I assumed you knew.’

‘Humour me.’

‘This is the Temple of Isis.’

Felix swore.

He travelled a lot. It was part of the game, how he stayed alive.

He’d been in cities with a dozen temples, villages with a single shrine, towns in between.

The world was vast and full of gods and ways to worship.

But one thing remained consistent in all his travels: those who followed Isis were always south of normal.

Loren sniffed. ‘I don’t want to know what you mean by that.’

‘The followers of Isis are cannibals.’

‘Yes, that’s why I brought you bandages. We like our dinner unspoiled.’ He glared. ‘We’re not cannibals, but you are part of a ritual. The others didn’t explain it. To me, at least. Something about virgin blood—’

‘I’m not a virgin,’ Felix cut in.

Watching Loren blush without his veil was even more satisfying, an all-consuming reaction, spreading down his thin face and painting the long column of his neck.

But for Felix, satisfaction came with a twinge of irritation.

Who was this boy? Every thought, every feeling that crossed Loren’s mind, he seemed to share with the world, intentionally or not.

Felix marvelled at it. Hated it. Envied it.

‘Not in that way,’ Loren said. ‘Virgin as in your blood has never been part of a ritual for Isis before.’

‘That’s not what it means.’

‘Is so. Look.’ He flopped onto the chaise, jostling the bowl of grapes in a way that gave Felix the shape of an escape plan. Loren extended his arm, pointing to the pale X of a scar in the crease of his elbow. ‘That’s why they can’t use me this time.’

‘Are you a virgin, then? The other kind.’ Felix plastered on his best shit-eating grin, and the rest panned out perfectly.

Loren jolted back, as though he’d only just realised how close they were sitting.

The sudden action sent the bowl flying. The dish clattered and cracked against the tile, and grapes scattered across the room, rolling in every direction.

Loren, apologising to no one, lunged to clean the mess, and Felix took the distraction as his cue.

Castor, surveying from atop a wobbly stool, shot Felix a look that said, Nice going, idiot .

Felix hissed. Castor zipped away.

Standing was a clumsy gamble, but Felix only needed to stay upright until he had reclaimed the helmet and escaped the city.

He might risk recovering his sandals, but screw going back to the statesman’s house for his satchel.

Whatever happened there, whatever fit the statesman had sent him into before the quake struck .

. . Felix didn’t want to think about that. Thinking broke all his rules.

Freedom would feel damned good. Holding the helmet again would feel even better .

Grapes squishing underfoot, Felix staggered to the door and burst outside.

‘Wait! ’ Loren cried, but Felix wasn’t stopping for anything, let alone some naive, indignant temple boy. He lurched toward the temple’s courtyard, dizziness forcing him to brace against the wall, breathing shallow.

‘Mm, this is not happening,’ a woman’s voice said from behind. Felix jumped, but before he could bolt, she slammed him to his knees.

Not for the first time that day. Humiliating.

Felix glanced back at his latest attacker.

Shorter and a few years older than he was, she had an upturned nose and hair cropped in an awkward bob.

Her veil hung below her chin. In the doorway stood Loren, stunned betrayal casting him even more naive and indignant than Felix thought possible.

With Loren’s hair so long and hers so short, they looked a pair of fools.

Felix wondered who they were trying to impress, or if the conditions for joining the Temple of Isis included a bad haircut.

‘Loren, bind him,’ she said, and a moment passed before Loren stepped forward, dropping handfuls of loose grapes. Soft fabric wrapped around Felix’s wrists. ‘Why didn’t you say he was awake?’

The pinch of Loren’s mouth tightened.

‘Because it only just happened,’ he said, masking his fluster with ease. ‘He jolted to his feet and made a dash for it.’

An utter lie. Loren didn’t strike Felix as the lying type. His feelings were too loud for that. But here, with this girl, he acted plenty practised in keeping secrets. Felix puzzled at the contradiction. Where it stemmed from.

What else Loren might be hiding.

‘Loren . . .’ started the woman, suspicion thick.