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Chapter XXIX

FELIX

L ucius Lassius’s chief mistake was making himself such a satisfying target to steal from.

When Felix had stolen his expensive reserve wine a month ago, he had already disliked the man on principle for making shit wine, but they had never met.

Now that Felix had given the estate three days of his life, dislike morphed into loathing.

Lassius had hardly spared a glance for Felix, but Felix picked out enough details by watching – how the man stalked his own halls, nose shoved in a letter, expecting those in his path to move first. He reeked of careless entitlement and excused it as business.

Three days in, he hadn’t visited his son since the night Felix dragged Loren home.

This time last week, Felix would have brushed these details off as unimportant, but he’d since learned that distracting details were often the most vital. And he began to plan.

Late on his final afternoon at the estate, Felix picked the lock on the study door and pushed it open, ready to put that plan into motion.

Lucius Lassius glanced up, irritation creasing his brow. ‘I could have sworn I latched that. ’

‘I hoped for a word,’ Felix said. ‘Is this a bad time? Loren told me you’re adept at handling contracts.’

Loren, of course, had said no such thing, and in fact had said nothing at all since the orchard. But the mention of him served its purpose in stroking Lassius’s ego.

‘So you thought to barge in.’ The scroll occupying Lassius’s attention sprang back to a coil.

‘I lost a significant swathe of land this week. Half of Campania is wiped out. My contracts in Herculaneum and Pompeii are forfeited. I haven’t the time for this.

I’ll entertain you only as payment for bringing Lorenus back. Speak quickly.’

Felix’s eyes fell onto a folded, dirty sheaf of parchment on the corner of the desk.

Target identified. He wet his lips, averting his gaze before it grew obvious.

Servants had recovered those papers while undressing a delirious Loren the evening they arrived, pulled from his pocket, and Felix recognised them – though the last time he saw them they were scattered on the floor of Servius’s office, Celsi scrambling to shuffle the sheets together.

How Loren came to have them Felix didn’t know, but irritation twinged at seeing the contract here, clearly untouched by Lassius even days later.

Any decent father, upon receiving his child bloodied and unconscious after years of separation, would show at least a bit of interest in the circumstances that had put his son in such a state.

Subtly, Felix edged towards the stack. ‘Generous of you, sir.’

‘I’m capable of detecting sarcasm,’ Lassius said. ‘What did you give your name as?’

‘Felix.’

‘Family name?’

Felix nearly admitted he had none. Then an idea struck him. He wouldn’t be able to read the contract on his own to learn exactly what it promised its heir. But maybe he didn’t need to. Not when the man before him would be all too willing to boast how much more he knew than Felix.

‘Fortunatus,’ said Felix. ‘That’s what I came to ask after. My father died years ago, and my, ah, older sister, well . . . I lost her in the same explosion that destroyed your northern vineyard.’

‘Julius Fortunatus, you say? I did business with him years ago, though I don’t recall hearing the news of his passing. Nor him having a son.’

‘Adopted,’ Felix lied. ‘I’m afraid I have nowhere to go. Our estate was lost, too.’

He tried to make himself sound pitiful to sell the story – not that he thought Lassius the type to let pity sway him. True to Felix’s prediction, Lassius didn’t soften so much as his mouth turned smug, a man who couldn’t resist letting others know when they had erred.

‘ Estates ,’ Lassius corrected, drawing out the plural. ‘And unless the fire spread much further than reported, I assume you haven’t lost all of them.’

‘I don’t understand.’ Felix plastered on the sweetest smile he could muster.

The magic phrase.

Lassius’s mouth curled, twice as smug, and turned to face the window. ‘Take your pick of Julius’s holiday homes. Amalfi, Rome. For Jupiter’s sake, the old man might have expanded to Londinium for all I know, if anything remains of it after the disaster that conquest turned out to be. Go there.’

‘Rome,’ Felix said, and with Lassius’s back still turned, he swiped the contract, slipping it neatly into his pocket. ‘Rome could be a nice change.’

*

A dove sang against the dying day when Felix found Loren standing lonely in the courtyard .

Felix once thought Loren would look nice carved in marble, but such stillness now unsettled him. Loren was made for big gestures, sunny smiles, stumbling over his own feet in his perpetual quest to prove a point. Stone didn’t become him, but stone greeted Felix as he crossed the grass.

‘The moon is out.’ Loren frowned at the sky.

‘It does that,’ Felix agreed.

‘During daylight. I’ve always found that odd. I can’t place what it means, an omen of good or bad fortune.’ The frown deepened, and Felix hated it. ‘Perhaps it means nothing at all.’

Felix studied him. They hadn’t spoken for days, though he’d kept watch at a distance. Listened at doors. Tracked Loren drifting lifeless through the property, ankle plastered, leaning heavily on a cane. Saw how he reached to grab a braid that no longer existed.

‘You should be resting,’ Felix said. ‘I’ll help you back to bed.’

Finally, a reaction. Loren bristled, glaring hot. ‘I’m capable on my own.’

He stalked towards the portico, cane indenting the grass, and Felix followed him into the halls, empty but for a pair of servants who averted their eyes and scurried off.

‘You came to say goodbye,’ Loren said, voice laced tight. ‘I can see it on your face.’

Felix wanted to protest that he hadn’t yet looked at his face, but the argument would be in vain. Loren was too good at reading him. ‘I want to. I should.’

‘Will you?’

‘Depends.’

Loren paused a moment before pushing into his room. There he tossed his cane onto the window seat and followed, curling in the corner, arms folded. ‘You remind me of Elias.’

‘You have a type,’ Felix said .

‘He’s dead,’ Loren said flatly. ‘So I hope not. And no. He also made a pastime of telling me what I didn’t want to hear. Even when I needed to hear it.’

Felix kept his distance, idling by the door, scanning the room for the dozenth time, as though it might reveal fresh secrets.

But the drapes on the walls stayed up, masking Loren’s childhood frescoes – so what if he’d peeked?

The bed stood neatly made. Gauzy curtains drifted in the breeze of the open shutters, the same draft stirring Loren’s chin-length hair.

So much had been lost. So much sacrificed for nothing. Anger at it all ate Felix alive, but when he spoke, he found he could barely muster more than a hard edge.

‘You warned me,’ Felix said at last. ‘You stopped me from putting the helmet on. Then you stopped Servius from undoing the mind block. You believed if my memories were triggered, it would make me dangerous.’

Time dragged as Loren stared hard at his knees, clothed in the white fall of his sleeping tunic. ‘I met a version of you. The ghost who haunted my dreams, who showed me Pompeii’s fate. He held your memories.’

‘Held my power, you mean.’

‘Felix. It was more than that. He held . . .’ Loren swallowed. ‘He held your anger, and he wanted you to take a turn carrying it. When you told me you feared what lay behind the wall of your memory, I couldn’t be the one to give him back to you.’

‘Jupiter.’ Felix scrubbed a ruined hand across his weary face, then sank onto the edge of the bed when his knees weakened. ‘You were right about one thing. You’re selfish. But in a way that’s so selfless it’s hard to recognise.’

‘I drew the wrong conclusion. I thought you and the helmet would wreck the city, when truly you were drawn to Pompeii to help its dead find rest afterwards. That the mountain . . . I was wrong. All I wanted was to protect you from what the ghost knew.’

‘But don’t you see? That’s exactly it. You go into every situation thinking you can solve it, because you were never taught that some problems can’t be both solved and survived.

Your whole life, you’ve never had to question your selfishness.

From the day we met, you didn’t hesitate to take from me, too, same as everyone else.

My body. My memories. My choice.’ Felix’s voice trembled.

He flexed his scarred fingers, testing his reflexes.

‘Is your opinion of my character so low? That if I remembered, I’d use that power to take in turn?

I’m not defined by what Mercury’s priest did to me. ’

‘I believe you,’ Loren whispered. ‘Felix, I’m sorry.’

‘I know you are, and that’s the worst part.

I know you thought you were protecting me, same as my father when he took my memories away.

But it should have been my decision. Mine, to learn my heritage on my terms.’ Desperation burned his throat.

He slid from the bed and knelt beside the window seat, grabbing Loren’s hand and pressing it to his cheek.

Felix closed his eyes. ‘If Servius could reach into my mind, can’t you as well? Couldn’t you . . .’

Fingers trembled cold against Felix’s face. Loren’s voice turned fear-thick. ‘Felix, I don’t—’

‘ Couldn’t you? ’

‘No.’ Loren wrenched his hand away as though bitten and jerked as far back as the window allowed.

Tears wet his cheeks, reddened his eyes.

‘I don’t trust myself not to have an agenda, even if it was protecting you.

But I could learn. I would spend the rest of my life studying how.

I’d meet with every augur, every priest, in every city until I could do it without hurting you. If that’s what you ask of me, I will.’

Felix rocked back from his knees to his heels and took a steadying breath.

Grief, pain, anger swirled in a concoction bitter as poppy sap in his belly.

Too much to handle. When he stood, his stomach lurched.

‘I won’t ask that. I don’t want you knowing how to do that to me.

But can I not be angry? With the helmet’s magic burned up, I might never know, not fully. My power might never be mine.’

‘You never wanted power,’ Loren whispered. ‘You said so.’

‘It’s never been an option. Everyone – my father, Servius, you – made sure of that.’ Felix cast Loren one last, tracing look, committing him to memory. ‘Should have been my choice.’

He left before his resolve could break.

Caesar – the poor horse Felix had inexplicably included in his radius of protection in Pompeii, whom he had then felt obliged to name with the highest title of all – lifted her head when he burst into the stables.

Three days’ recovery wasn’t long enough for the hell he’d put her through, but Felix swallowed his guilt as he saddled her and swung onto her back.

At least she didn’t seem to mind. She tossed her brushed mane as he brought her to a trot on the paved lane leading away from the estate, then worked her to a gallop on the main road, startling a burst of starlings from their autumn branches.

It should have felt good, the breeze, the sun, the flex of Caesar’s muscles. The freedom.

But Felix couldn’t breathe out here, either. Black closed around his vision, throwing him back to the swallow of the pitch-dark wave. That was what he kept returning to. Over and over, a waking nightmare: he never intended to survive.

He didn’t mean that in some grand, self-sacrificing way. Heroism wasn’t his style. It was more . . . it would be easier. Cleaner, if Felix never left Pompeii. If the truth died with him.

But the world moved in messy arcs, and he’d startled awake, still in his body, clutching fragments of the only power he’d ever known. Mercury had saved both, when Felix only meant for him to save one. There was an implication there, but he still didn’t have the head – or heart – to interrogate it .

So he’d done the only thing his stunned bones knew. Move. Same as he did now. Anything to escape being forced to think.

The road from the estate wound around the curve of a shallow valley, then over a rocky hillside.

Felix clutched Caesar’s reins with numb fingers, ruined fingers, and fought the sting in his eyes.

Blame that on the wind. Caesar picked up speed, kicking road dust, but at the crest of the hill, Felix cracked.

Yanking the horse to a stop, he did something he swore he wouldn’t do.

He looked back.

Back at the sprawling vineyard, acres and acres of it, trellises blushing orange in the sunset.

The orchard where he’d laid the helmet to rest. Felix had buried himself on this estate, too, and now he was leaving behind the only boy who’d brought out the best in him.

The boy who saw him, even as he slipped through life unseen.

Felix wondered if Loren was watching his flight, dead-eyed from his bedroom window. He wondered how Loren would grieve him. If the grief would fade like a bruise over time, or ache for the rest of his life, a bone fracture healed wrong.

He touched the contract in his pocket. He could take on Julia Fortunata’s family name, have a house, a life, a future in Rome. Forget Loren. But that was the catch to letting someone past your walls. Once they were part of your home, their absence echoed.

Felix was sick to death of letting ghosts decide his fate.

The next time he ran, it would be towards something. Not away.

‘Damn it all,’ he muttered.

He turned the horse around.