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Chapter XXVII

FELIX

S ince he was a little boy, Felix had admired hands.

The measure of their strength. Their variety, some old and some new. Wrinkled or smooth. Frail or rugged. Their capacity for cruelty or kindness, sometimes by the same set of hands in moments back-to-back. Hands told a story that didn’t depend on the words Felix couldn’t read.

He’d loved his da’s hands most. Just the right size for holding his own.

Quick as lightning striking, Da’ could make anything vanish then reappear before the eye blinked.

Never callused or clumsy because, as he often reminded Felix, a fumble for a thief was as good as a death sentence.

And he never fumbled, so neither did Felix.

But his father never predicted Felix’s clever fingers would one day get him into this much shit.

He raced down the ruined Via Stabiana, dragging Loren along.

Loren’s hand slid with sweat where Felix clutched it with a desperation he’d never known.

It threatened to slip free. He tightened his grip into an impossible vice.

Gods help him, he wouldn’t lose Loren now, not the only thing he’d found worth holding on to.

The only good thing. Felix also held something far more damning.

Mercury’s helmet had hummed to his touch in Servius’s courtyard, but now it vibrated, charged with sparking, furious power.

Loren had been right, it ought to have been left behind.

But it belonged to Felix. In a world that had given him nothing of his own, not his body, not his memories, the helmet responded to him alone. He would carry it to world’s end.

Energy crackled. Memories rose to trip him, scenes triggered by Servius’s searching thumb.

Twin snakes curling up his father’s arm, forked tongues darting.

Bells laughing bright. A festival day. Felix wrestled the flood down, fighting to stay present.

He didn’t – sleight of hand, a hundred coins in little pockets, and he pulled them out in a scatter and the others clapped and his da’s eyes crinkled and . . .

Felix willed his feet faster, feathery flames licking his heels.

Burning rock sprayed from above, rain of hellfire. Sticky smoke wrapped around him, thick and hot on his skin. The cries of those still trapped shredded Felix’s soul.

The market street stretched for ever, a road with no terminus. If he squinted through the haze, he could barely make out the gate in the distance.

Too far.

Felix didn’t need visions to know that Pompeii was about to be swallowed alive.

It had reached its end. The last gasp. The final page.

Death suffocated the city, agitated, wordless pleas only he could hear.

He recognised the ghosts begging for rest, a familiar hum he could never put from his mind.

Incorporeal hands grabbed his ankles, his clothes, willing him to reach back.

Felix wanted to. He wanted to slip a coin in every mouth, coax death to its long sleep.

He wanted more time.

‘Felix, I can’t,’ Loren wheezed, the grind of his lagging pace slowing them both.

‘You have to.’ Felix clenched his teeth against clouds of stinging ash. He kept moving. Moving was all he was good at. Running from his problems. Never facing them head-on .

Head-on meant danger, and Felix had never been brave.

‘My leg—’

‘Your leg won’t matter if you die.’ His lungs tightened, bursting with poisoned air. Ash burned inside to out. Every movement tore his muscles past what he could tolerate.

Lantern light glinted off Mercury’s winged feet in the temple.

Felix waited alone, legs dangling off the altar block.

Lately all he knew was alone. He missed watching his father’s magic tricks, hearing his ghost stories.

He missed the time before cups of sticky wine were pressed into his small hand by the priest. He missed when being here didn’t leave him with a hurt he couldn’t name.

Smoke bit the corners of Felix’s eyes. A fiery boulder hit an awning to the right and it shattered. Flaming fragments of wood and rock exploded outwards. Felix ducked to avoid a blow from a piece sailing past. On his left, a building shuddered and collapsed in a plume of dust.

Loren twisted his wrist. Terror seized Felix, and he dug his nails in, a last-ditch effort.

‘Let me go.’ Loren’s other hand clawed. ‘I won’t make it, let me—’

Felix snarled, the least human he’d ever felt.

It ripped through his chest, splitting him in two angry pieces.

He said no words. He had none. His brain had ceased thinking in language, only noise and sound and chaos.

Primal. Horrifying, but he let the ferality rock through him, the only defence he had.

Loren let out a muffled sob and stopped resisting, and Felix’s eyes burned and blistered as he dragged him along, useless as a doll.

Laughter surrounded him, until the laughter stopped, replaced by quiet poppy. Little Felix had no words then, either. Not beneath the priest’s wandering, hurtful hands. Not when the stark temple chilled Felix’s skin, bare before the hollow, impassive stare of Mercury’s statue.

Watching, and doing nothing.

Felix bit his tongue and learned what silence meant .

The horse was a surprise.

It announced itself with a terrified whinny, hooves stomping on cobblestones. Some monstrous owner had cruelly tied it to a stake beneath a roof to burn with the rest of the city. Felix darted for it. He could do it. He could save all three of them: himself, Loren, this unlucky bastard of a horse.

At least, that was Felix’s plan.

And it fell to shit so gracefully.

Felix scrambled to untie the reins. It wasn’t until he reached back that he realised Loren wasn’t there.

The world stopped.

Felix turned.

Loren had his palms against the ground.

Another of his visions, striking at a bad time as always. That, Felix could have handled. He could have slung Loren’s semi-conscious body over the horse and ridden far and free. Loren would come around miles from this wretched place. They’d be together. They would heal.

But the truth came ugly when Felix dropped to Loren’s side. Because he wasn’t drifting, lost somewhere in the urgent future. He was wide-eyed. Shivering.

‘ Go! ’ he shouted, shoving Felix away. ‘Forget me, I can’t . . .’

Felix dropped the helmet. It chattered against stone, an angry thing. He gripped Loren under the arms, tried dragging him, but Loren gave a sharp gasp.

The truth came uglier.

His ankle was crooked, bent in a way that made Felix’s own bones ache. Loren must have slipped in the blood pooled in his sandal.

Yesterday, Felix had teased Loren about this, on the road to Vesuvius.

If you twist an ankle, I’m not carrying you back .

This was more than a twist .

‘Let’s get you up now,’ Felix muttered.

‘Just leave me,’ Loren begged. Tears streaked through soot, clean tracks on dirty cheeks.

‘I can lift you.’

‘You can’t. It’s over. I did this. I did this to you. It’s my fault. It’s over.’

‘Don’t say that.’ Hours ago, when sky still existed beyond storm, Felix had thought the same, that his road had ended. It seemed fine to think then, but hearing Loren say it stung, vinegar over a fresh cut. ‘Never say that.’

Loren shook his head, frantic. ‘I met you on the mountain. A ghost of you who held your memories, and he told me everything, that if you put the helmet on – but I stopped you. I lied. We were supposed to do this together. I thought . . . protecting you . . .’

He broke off in a coughing fit. Felix shut his eyes briefly, letting the truth sink in.

He already knew Loren was keeping the answers he’d learned secret, but the confirmation ached.

Felix needed to force this down, separate himself from his emotions as he’d done so many times before, his hurt and anger.

Later , he promised himself.

For once – if they survived this – Felix would let himself feel it all.

‘Felix,’ Loren whispered. He cupped Felix’s face, and Felix’s heart thudded a dull rhythm, beating bruises into his chest. ‘I’m sorry.’

The storm broke.

Felix saw it first in flashes, then in waves.

With any weather event, there’s a moment between the break and the fall, when, suspended in time, the world below waits for the blow.

The first patter of rain. The first knock of hail or gust of wind.

Felix always liked that period of anticipation, knowing what would happen before it hit home; he could sense the change in the air.

He’d tip his chin to the sky and wait to feel cool, clean droplets.

This wasn’t the same .

What started as a distant rumble crashed into an ear-splitting roar, no beginning and no end. Clouds of ash convulsed above. The thread of the moment wound tighter. Tighter still.

Then the sky, held by Atlas’s quaking shoulders, fell.

A black curtain dropped, rolling across the horizon, churning and boiling in a great rolling wave. It swept forward to seek and devour, never to be sated. Thousands of crawling hands. Reaching.

Towards them.

‘Don’t look,’ Felix breathed even as he kept his eyes trained forward.

Loren’s lips were cracked. Felix wanted to press against them still. Press against all of Loren. Their last moments before the darkness hit, tangled together, limb to limb, body to body. Not a terrible way to go.

But Felix was divorced from his flesh, soul torn in two. One half was numb, incapable of thinking past Loren’s harsh breath and hot skin. The other half knew what needed to be done.

The helmet is but a conduit. Felix is the untapped vessel.

He curled a hand around the helmet. This choice still belonged to him.

Loren’s eyes went impossibly wider. ‘Felix, no, don’t—’

Felix held the helmet out. ‘Mercury, help me.’

Then he slammed it over Loren’s head.

His hands had never fumbled. Not once. He suspected there’d be a cost to this stunt. He only hoped he’d live long enough to see it through.

In the instant before the wave crashed, Felix was sure he’d misjudged. Misinterpreted what Servius had said, misunderstood what he’d already known himself – that Felix himself – not the helmet – was the true power. And after all, if this was his helmet by birthright, he’d use it as he saw fit.

Felix couldn’t help the city. But he’d burn himself up to save Loren .

At first, nothing.

Then the helmet was down, and Loren’s mouth opened in a silent scream, and the metal against Felix’s palms lit like a gods-damned sacrificial fire. He bared his teeth through the sear, bracing the helmet as it shook and sang and came to life.

Power shot through his body, a crystal strike. Light brimmed in his chest. Power he’d never known, power that was his alone, power he’d . . . he could . . . he could . . .

Felix could tear the world apart, and he had half a mind to.

But he stared at Loren’s face, familiar and dear, seized in agony and framed by silver wings. Felix felt how Loren’s soul feathered, detached, fell into a plane no one living could cross. The ghost of fingers brushed the pads of Felix’s. A farewell, slipping soft away.

All this power, but Loren was still going to die.

Felix’s entire life, he’d run. From bad turns of luck, from those who dared get too close.

From belief and from himself. Choosing flight was his long exercise in ensuring no one hurt him again.

Choosing flight was all Felix could choose in a life that had made him a pawn.

Every lesson he’d ever learned had been at the hands of fear.

Until now. Until Loren.

This last lesson was from love.

‘Not you,’ Felix whispered. He reached into the murky space between life and death. He grabbed Loren’s hand. And he let the power go in one charged rush.

Thunder rolled.

His vision washed black.

A splitting white sting.

Clarity engulfed him, followed by . . .

Pain like nothing else.

‘You’re glowing,’ Loren breathed before his eyes rolled back in his head.

Felix trembled.

He was certain he could see his father now.

This time when Felix ran, there was no field of poppies. His bloody feet beat against barren land. Scorched earth, rancid and bitter and black.