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Chapter XXX

LOREN

W hen Loren slept, his dreams were empty.

He preferred the nightmares.

He began stretching his waking hours, first to midnight, and when that offered little respite, beyond.

He paced. Up the halls of the estate, long after servants turned in.

Through the orchard, past the helmet’s grave.

Down the straight, narrow rows of the vineyard.

Fatigue tugged him, his ankle begged for rest, but exhaustion and pain were temporary troubles. He endured both.

Only when Felix caught him did Loren allow himself to be coaxed to bed.

Felix rarely said a word, even as the routine wore him down, strain apparent in tired eyes and tight shoulders.

Another source of guilt. Felix had come back.

Chosen Loren as he’d wanted him to. Loren should feel lucky when Felix sat at the foot of his bed, waiting for him to drift off.

So lucky. But it was hard to feel anything when he barely felt alive.

He slept. And woke again in his dreams. Gone were blood and daggers, billowing smoke and ragged whispers, as if those, too, were left cinders in the rubble.

Instead Loren faced endless nights in an empty temple, its worshippers long since fled.

No statue to mark its devotion. Frescoes stripped from the walls.

Loren wandered and wandered but never found an exit.

Sometimes he heard footsteps, but they flitted away when he sought the source.

He knew the source. He recognised the pattern of stealth and sandal as the same steps that followed him during his waking hours, watching him close.

But Ghost-Felix had nothing more to say, and Loren, despite his efforts, dreamed alone.

If his dreams were empty, they balanced out the way he burst when awake. Rot flooded him to the brim, a constant sickness of festering numbness that little could stir him from. Days slipped and spilled into each other. The moon came and went. Loren didn’t care. He’d stopped keeping track.

‘You did so much damage to this leg,’ announced the family physician one morning, ‘you should thank Apollo we do not need to amputate.’

He sounded disappointed that amputation was not, in fact, on the table. Loren felt his eyes glaze over as the man launched into a lecture about the necessity of letting bones come together at their leisure, and not disturbing the process.

‘Lorenus gets plenty of rest,’ his mother, Hemetra, cut in. Loren had nearly forgotten she was in his bedroom, too, so silent by the door. ‘Convincing him to attend to his responsibilities is Sisyphean. The last thing he needs is more incentive to laze about.’

He knew her well enough to pick out an attempt at teasing, but it only stretched the edges of old wounds, same as the physician poking the stitches on Loren’s thigh.

The physician’s face pinched. ‘These fresh scratches on his legs suggest otherwise. What did you do, boy, lose a fight with a thorn bush? ’

Loren bit his tongue. If his mother didn’t yet know of his night-time excursions, it wouldn’t do to incite a scolding now.

The physician wrapped his tools, still shaking his head, and hobbled out, leaving Loren alone with his mother.

He studied her, trying to spot the woman who raised him beneath her brittle exterior.

She’d aged, certainly, but hadn’t they all?

Her hair, once the same dark brown as his, now sported grey streaks.

New lines creased her lips, held pursed as she perched on the edge of his bed.

When Loren was a child, he thought her aloof as an olive tree, strong-boughed and stern against storms howling from the sea. Something sturdy to cling to, but not made for comfort. Now he wondered what, precisely, she’d been protecting. If it had ever been him at all.

‘Has it really been four years? The number of times your father wanted to bring you home, why, I stopped him, of course. I knew you would come around once you worked it from your system.’ She smoothed his choppy hair back from his face. ‘This is getting long. Won’t you let me cut it?’

Loren reached for his braid and clutched air. ‘I’d rather not.’

‘We’ll discuss it as a family later,’ she said, as if it were the family hair.

Irritation prickled Loren’s nerves, their constant state these days. He was tired of being on edge. He was tired of feeling seconds from boiling over. He fiddled with a hole in his sleeping tunic until she batted his fingers away with a sigh.

‘I can’t help but feel distance between us,’ she said. ‘What changed? You were contrary as a child, but now you’re obstinate.’

Laughter rose, but the kind closer to crying. He wanted to howl at her that if she wanted an answer, she should reflect on each time she’d sided with his father over him, each dismissal of his fears as madness. There she might uncover what dug the chasm .

He couldn’t muster the energy. ‘Father found his success through being headstrong, so you taught me to act the same. Now you punish me for it.’

‘When have I ever punished you?’ From anyone else, it would have been a snap, but proper ladies didn’t snap. ‘The one lesson that clearly didn’t stick was humility. Perhaps I indulged you too much. Paints, instruments, tutors, scrolls.’

‘Don’t grow sentimental on me now, Mamma.’

She glanced at her lap. ‘You haven’t called me that since you were young.’

‘Father told me it wasn’t proper to use diminutives once I outgrew boyhood.’

‘Well, I suppose he’s right.’ His mother looked at Loren straight on and, for a moment, he saw her as she’d been before Lucius Lassius stomped the laughter from them both. Their same brown eyes, same pinch of their identical mouth. ‘I’ll leave you to rest.’

She smoothed the rumpled bedding that was all that proved she’d been there at all, but at the door, she lingered. ‘Your friend. How long does he expect to stay?’

Loren tensed. ‘Is his presence a problem?’

As far as he knew, Felix was a model guest. Sparse, non-intrusive, practised at staying out of sight.

When Felix wasn’t trailing Loren around the estate, he spent hours in the orchard on his own.

Or he tucked himself away here, while Loren curled at the window seat.

Sometimes Felix brought a scroll stolen from Lassius’s collection, asked Loren to read it aloud. Mostly they sat in silence.

‘He spends an awful lot of time with you,’ said his mother.

‘He’s my friend.’

‘Careful with your tone, Lorenus.’ She regarded him coolly. ‘I’m considering your best interests, and you know better than to dwell on a fantasy. Whoever this boy is, put him from your mind. This is your life. This is your family. Resentment will do you no favours, believe me.’

Sharp footsteps retreated down the hall.

Grapes undergo an interesting change when turned to wine, a point where rot morphs into fermentation and, later, a prized drink.

Loren felt the rot within him, chest packed with sickly-sweet pulp.

He felt bubbling fermentation, stretching his patience and splitting his seams. But he was a spoiled batch.

When merchants would crack him open in years to come, they’d find a jug gone off. Pour him into the latrine.

Wasteful.

Lucius Lassius strode in without warning after lunch, bread and figs Loren had listlessly picked over.

In his haste to scramble off his bed, he nearly snapped his other ankle.

But his father didn’t spare a glance, crossing instead to gaze out at the vineyard.

His favourite hobby, staring at what he owned.

‘Still in bed?’ Lassius said, clipped as ever. ‘All this land to call your own, and you waste away in here. In our last conversation before you ran off, you called my home a cage, but have you considered you imprison yourself?’

‘My leg hurts,’ Loren said.

Lassius tutted. ‘As does my back, but there is work to be done. More still with the destruction of our northern vineyards to sort out.’

Silence. That was all Loren could muster.

His father, with his status and investments, had known about Pompeii’s ruination even before Felix dragged Loren home.

Had Lassius spared a thought for his son living in Vesuvius’s shadow?

Had he grieved, organised a search party, considered a body- less funeral?

Lassius faced him, arms clasped behind his back. ‘We have much to discuss. I need an estimate on your recovery. Gaius Lucretius wants this over with as soon as possible.’

‘Sorry,’ Loren said slowly. ‘Who?’

‘Did your mother not tell you? The engagement.’

The world tilted sideways. He gripped the headboard to stay upright. ‘Engagement?’

‘Surely this isn’t a surprise.’ Lassius met Loren’s horror with a measured stare. ‘You will be seventeen soon, long past the age I was when I married your mother. The contract is drawn. Gaius Lucretius’s daughter is suitable.’

It was too much. Fury swelled. He tried to hold it back, but he blurted, ‘Suitable? A girl I’ve never met and would have no interest in, besides? Then what? Have a baby, name him Lucius Lassius and carry on the family tradition of misery?’

‘Finding a match for you was difficult enough. Do not sink our family name lower.’

Loren breathed heavily. His father’s eyes tracked his every move, searching for an opening to strike. When Loren finally spoke, he gritted his teeth to keep his voice steady. ‘I’m sorry to be an inconvenience. I thought many men would be eager to marry a daughter into your family.’

‘They should. If you stayed here rather than gallivanting off, they would. The physician suspects you’ll walk with a limp the remainder of your life. As it is, you struggle to keep up mentally, not to mention your fits. The next time someone outsmarts you, how will you run away with a mangled leg?’

Under Loren’s splint, his ankle throbbed. ‘Felix keeps pace with me. Wherever we go.’

‘Where will you turn when he tires of you?’

Humiliation crept up Loren’s spine. ‘Contrary to what you and Mother think, I’m not entirely unlovable. ’