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Chapter XXVI

LOREN

W hen Felix had said Loren ran towards fire, surely he hadn’t meant a funeral pyre.

Darius’s grip was unrelenting, even as fire licked his hands. Loren twisted, a final effort to protect his face. Not that it mattered. Flames crept up his tunic, his neck, snared his braid. Soon his whole body would burn.

His eyes stung, the only sensation he could parse.

The fire’s roar swallowed the rest. He thrashed, clawing Darius.

Blistering heat ate and ate. Smoke choked him.

Tears dried as fast as they formed. Loren had fled all the way to Pompeii and he still couldn’t breathe.

He may as well have died beneath Maxim’s fist.

The memory inspired fresh conviction, and Loren kicked. His sandal slapped leather. With a quiet grunt, Darius’s hold loosened.

Freedom. Loren squirmed loose and rolled away from the blaze, patting his braid, his tunic, his flesh. Fibre came away in ashen clumps. The hair on his arms had singed to cinders. Every inch of him smarted. Gasping, he rose to his knees and squinted at the scene.

Something had shifted while Loren was in the fire, a change in energy, but he couldn’t put a finger on what, only that a low hum now eclipsed the distant thundering of the mountain.

Celsi had vanished, hopefully fled somewhere far away.

Ash and embers obscured Felix and Servius at the altar, and bronze glinted in the grass – it seemed Loren wasn’t the only one capable of weaponising a bowl.

The two were locked in a grapple across the podium, Servius clutching the sides of Felix’s face.

Felix, it appeared, was losing.

Pushing to his feet, Loren took a single wobbly step.

His respite didn’t last. Darius, recovered from the blow, re-engaged.

His sword had vanished in the dark sea of rubble, but he had his body.

He lunged. Loren sidestepped the grab and used the momentum to swing himself onto Darius’s back, winding his arms around Darius’s thick neck and tightening.

Brutal but efficient. And Loren had learned it from Darius himself.

For a moment, Darius scrabbled. Then his whole body went lax. Loren slipped free. No sooner had he let go than a big hand gripped his ankle and tugged. He fell. Hard.

A feint , Ghost-Felix muttered in the back of Loren’s head. So easily tricked.

‘Shut up,’ Loren growled.

Darius pinned Loren, forearm to chest. ‘Didn’t say anything.’

‘Wasn’t talking to you.’ Loren wriggled. ‘But if you want a conversation, should we discuss the state of your balls?’

‘My—’ Darius cut off with a groan as Loren’s knee jabbed up. Another thrust, and he backed off.

Loren tumbled free, panting, and scrambled for the flash of iron he’d seen while prone. Not his sword, but it would do. He trained the blade at Darius’s chest. ‘I don’t want to kill you the way I did Maxim. So don’t move.’

Darius stilled. ‘Maxim is dead?’

‘Don’t. Move.’

Then Loren sprinted for Felix, his only pillar standing in a world turned to rubble.

Or not standing. Felix sagged in the grass, eyes shut, face cradled in Servius’s bare palms. Blood trickled from Felix’s nose, down his chin, dark droplets on his tunic front. Ice-cold fury washed through Loren’s veins. He raised his sword for the final slash.

‘Put that down,’ Servius said, never breaking from Felix. ‘Don’t come closer.’

‘He doesn’t like to be touched.’ Loren panted.

‘No, I imagine he doesn’t.’ The words were a low hiss, ruthless as snake venom and twice as deadly. ‘For all his razor-sharp posturing, he’s a soft thing when helpless.’

A thumb brushed the crest of Felix’s cheekbone. Nausea curled in Loren’s stomach. He had cupped the ghost’s face like that, only yesterday. ‘I’ll give you one second to release him.’

‘He told me he didn’t believe in magic. Funny, when I can feel the threads in his mind, the way he slips about unseen.

Sharp senses. Uncommon luck. Light on his feet, swift as an arrow.

And so easy for others to weave those threads anew.

It’s how his father made him forget.’ Servius met Loren’s eyes.

‘Forget his pain, at the expense of also forgetting his power. How cruel to deny him the truth.’

Sweat made Loren’s grip on his sword slip. Servius’s words dripped with accusation – as though he somehow knew the ghost had already told Loren all this on the peak of Vesuvius, and Loren had failed to listen. In doing so, he’d denied Felix the truth, too.

‘That’s the give and take of magic. The more you have, the more others want to wield it to their advantage.’ Servius’s stroking thumb stilled. ‘Ah. Here are the memories, muted for so long. Should I release them? See what he does once he remembers who he is?’

Don’t let him , Ghost-Felix begged, deep in Loren’s mind. He will twist what he releases. Only the helmet holds no agenda.

Loren swallowed bile. ‘One.’

He swung. Marred by trembling hands, the blow merely grazed Servius’s shoulder, but he let go with a hiss. Felix’s lashes fluttered as he came back .

‘I see Julia turned you arrogant as she is.’ Servius hauled himself up with a sneer. Blood oozed from his wound. ‘Not a shock, the way you snivelled for her at the games.’

‘What did you do to her?’

Surprise flickered before a smirk twisted Servius’s mouth. ‘We didn’t touch her. She left you as carrion for the vultures.’

That must be a lie. Surely Julia wouldn’t . . . she’d said . . .

Loren slashed again, snarling when Servius dodged neatly, taking another step back.

‘All for nothing. Because with Felix in my power, I won’t need her damned estate to pass legislation. The helmet is but a conduit. He’s the untapped vessel. Power over the space between life and death, can’t you imagine? He will make the emperor’s ghost beg before we’re through with Rome.’

Life and death and the space in between.

Loren stilled. Revelations crashed through his mind of all the clues he’d missed.

Felix’s sensitivity to Clovia’s murder. The ghost’s warning that a haze of death hovered over Pompeii, a burden only Felix could shoulder.

Felix’s incoherent mumbling about his task .

Mercury had called Felix – his blood – to the city not to destroy it.

To tend to its dead. Take them to their rest.

Loren shivered against a sudden chill. ‘Felix isn’t cruel. He wouldn’t use his power for that.’

Servius barked a laugh. ‘Wouldn’t he? After all he’s endured?’

A flash of copper hair disappearing into swirling silver.

Years of stagnant anger pouring free.

‘You don’t care about him,’ Loren said. ‘You would use him as a weapon.’

‘I’m a person,’ Felix said from behind, wounded voice a quiet punch. When Loren turned, Felix was hunched over the helmet, hugging it tight. He seemed so small in the dark. ‘Not a vessel. Not a weapon. ’

Loren’s heart skipped. ‘I didn’t mean—’

‘Put the helmet on,’ said Servius. ‘Prove us wrong. Finish this now.’

For a moment, a shattering, pulsing flash, Loren saw the end.

Not the end of the world, though that was imminent, but the end of Felix.

His Felix, the one Loren had grown to know and treasure and need in only a handful of days.

The Felix who listened and laughed, sharp as a blade, and spoke with cutting precision, wounding with words as often as he spun sweet sentences. Who followed Loren up a mountain.

Unravel. Remake. Hollow boy.

But Felix only snarled. ‘Make me.’

‘Darius,’ Servius said politely. ‘Help him reconsider.’

Darius, pride aching as much as his balls must, glowered from where he lurked. ‘He’s the only one who can touch that helmet.’

‘That isn’t what I asked.’

Servius and Darius locked eyes. Something passed between them, and Darius drew to his full height. Loren adjusted his grip on the sword and prepared to throw himself in front of Felix.

Darius said, ‘No.’

Servius wet his lips. Venom dripped. ‘No?’

‘I’ve done your bidding for years. Anything you asked.’ Darius fiddled with his badge, same as the one decaying on Maxim in the ravine. ‘But this is too much. That thing – look at what it did to your hands.’

‘I stalled your legion from executing you. That’s a blood debt.’

‘One I’ve paid many times over. Same as Maxim.’

Servius sneered again. ‘Once a defector, always a defector.’

‘He was my friend.’ Darius winced. ‘I won’t go the same way he did. You’ll tear down the world to get what you what. Then what will you have left?’

With a final shake of his head, he dropped his badge in the grass and strode for the exit .

‘I suppose,’ Servius said, ‘I’ll do it myself.’

He struck like a viper, Loren’s stolen gladius in hand. Loren hadn’t seen Servius draw it from his belt. Pain erupted down his thigh, a clean slash for a heartbeat, but as he watched, two paces removed from his body, the gash darkened, and out poured a river of sticky wine.

Loren swayed. Crumpled.

The sword he’d taken from Darius was prised from his grip.

A mutter in his ear. ‘Staunch that.’

And Felix charged Servius.

Loren’s head spun. Felix wanted him to stop the bleeding, put pressure on the bleeding, stop the bleeding .

One problem – Loren was locked. Disconnected.

There was so much blood. So much, fresh and smelling tangy as iron.

He touched the wound, shuddering when his fingers came back stained purple as crushed grapes.

‘Would this help?’

Celsi had crouched at Loren’s side. He offered a torn piece of scarlet cloth, a shade Aurelia always begged to weave with but was too expensive for Livia to afford. Loren could gift the cloth to her at the shop . . . later . . .

There was no later. There was now, and that was all. He snatched the cloth, and Celsi flinched. Loren twisted the fabric tight as he could around the gash.

‘There’s this, too.’ Shakily, Celsi presented a folded document and shoved it into Loren’s bloody hand. ‘Senator Servius threw it out, but you should have it.’