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Chapter XXXI

FELIX

O ne afternoon in the orchard, Felix sensed a call in the rustling leaves of a changing season.

Time to go.

Not that he needed the trees to tell him.

This was the longest he’d stayed in one place since escaping Rome all those years ago, and he’d worn his welcome thin.

He was more resilient than most, but there were only so many sidelong glances from Lucius Lassius anyone could endure before taking the hint.

The afternoon was mellow for late autumn, the bare hint of a breeze whistling through the foliage overhanging the stone bench Felix sat on. Pomegranate juice dribbled down his wrist and splattered in the dirt.

‘If you splash that on my parchment,’ Loren warned from beside him, ‘my father will have a stroke.’

‘All the more reason for me not to touch it,’ Felix said.

‘These are meant to be your lessons.’

A scroll lay unfurled between them, Loren’s cane serving as a paperweight.

Narrow sunlight tinted his chin-length hair bronze, and he wore a leather band across his crown to tame fly-aways.

Dressed in a wine-coloured tunic that drew out the warm tones of his skin, Loren looked healthy.

Proper. Patrician. So different from the wraith in a white sleeping shirt Felix had spent many nights trailing through the vineyard.

He didn’t realise he was staring until he squeezed the pomegranate too hard and red seeds burst across his numb fingers. Droplets sprayed.

‘Felix!’ Loren glared, but not for long. His lips twitched and then he snorted, and Felix snorted, and they dissolved into giggles.

‘Sorry,’ Felix said, not feeling sorry at all. He gave up on the pomegranate, tossed it aside and wiped clean his pocketknife.

The laughter died in Loren’s mouth. His eyes had snagged on the knife.

‘I think about him,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘The ghost I met in my dreams. The one who . . .’

‘Remembered,’ finished Felix.

‘I haven’t seen him since.’ Loren ducked his head, and the day frosted over. ‘I have more to say to him. Apologies. Questions. I walk laps around an empty temple for hours, searching in vain. I wonder if he found closure, now that you recall some of what happened, but that seems naive to hope.’

Felix frowned, unsure how to carry on. They’d grown back together in a quiet way, stealing bits of time, frail and fleeting as a petal. But this they hardly addressed. Loren’s guilt split them in an ugly gash, divided down the middle with no bridge Felix could find to cross.

Loren wasn’t the same boy Felix had met in Pompeii.

Unlike Felix, Loren had no frame of reference for this type of loss, no experience to work from.

Small noises startled him. Smiles were rare, laughter rarer still.

Most days, Felix didn’t know if his being near Loren hurt or helped.

Because for all the good spending time together did, Loren’s irritability tolerance was near non-existent.

He’d snap, then withdraw, and Felix could do little else besides sit with him until the episode passed.

Good thing Felix now had fresh practice sitting still .

He put the knife away. ‘If I ask you a question, will you answer honestly?’

Familiar words from that first night at the brothel.

Loren’s mouth pinched. ‘Go on.’

‘I never understood fully – why me? Your visions, that is. Why us?’

‘I don’t know. Surely there’s no simple answer, but . . . I have a theory.’

‘Of course you do.’ Felix hovered a hand over the cane until Loren nodded permission for him to move it aside. Then he lay back, rumpling the parchment, and pillowed his head on Loren’s thigh. ‘Tell me.’

Hesitant fingers began to comb through his hair. Felix’s eyes drifted shut.

‘In Greece, they say we’re born with our soul split,’ Loren began, uncertain.

‘With half placed in someone else. Life’s point, then, is to make oneself whole again.

I don’t know that I agree. Each time I try to make sense of something through myth, I only worsen it.

Besides, I think we’re born complete on our own.

But hearts are built to resonate, and it’s a matter of finding one who beats in tune with yours.

By coincidence, the ghost found my mind open. ’

‘Since when do you believe in coincidence?’

‘Since you started believing in anything. We’re proof people change.

’ Whatever wry smile had built on his face faded.

‘You have godly blood, Felix. You were always meant to be a hero, and whatever curse or blessing granted me my visions tied a string between us. I was to guide you. But no one could have predicted what Mercury’s priest did, nor the lengths your father would go to.

The version of you in my nightmares was angry.

Hurt and alone. And I misunderstood what he needed. ’

The hand buried in Felix’s curls stilled. Cool distance washed over Loren again.

‘I don’t blame you,’ Felix said. ‘You didn’t know what the dreams meant. You thought you were protecting me. What could you have done?’

‘I could have listened. ’

‘You do. You make your touch a question. And if my answer was no, I trust you would hear me.’

Loren paused, a stillness that dragged until Felix cracked his lids open again.

Above him, cast against a sky of pale blue, Loren pinned him with his softest look yet.

Despite the sweetness of pomegranate lingering on his tongue, Felix’s mouth dried.

He caught Loren’s fingers and pressed his lips to his palm.

‘Read to me.’ Felix tilted his head, kissed the pad of his thumb. ‘My turn to listen. I like the way you speak.’

For another long moment, he wondered if he’d finally broken Loren, the way he fell so silent. At last, Loren cleared his throat. ‘Latin or Greek?’

‘What?’

Pink washed over Loren’s cheeks as he fumbled for his tube of scrolls. ‘ The Iliad . I brought pages of each. The translation by Italicus is far inferior to the original, even if the language is easier to digest, but my Greek is rusty, so—’

‘Loren? Just read.’

‘Right.’ Parchment shuffled. Loren cleared his throat a second time. His fingers returned to Felix’s hair. Quietly, he began, ‘ Rage, muse, sing the rage of Achilles . . . ’

Felix leaned into it, the touch and sound and smell of this boy. Clouds drifted overhead, and dappled shadows played in the breeze – warm, but with the promise of cooler days to come. Apricots and pomegranates hung swollen ripe. Somewhere, a honeybee made its rounds.

And Felix sat with Loren. And that was all.

‘Your arrogance baffles me,’ Lucius Lassius said before dawn the next morning, the household still hushed. He’d intercepted Felix in the courtyard as he crossed to Loren’s wing of the estate. ‘To masquerade as a dead man’s son is obscene, particularly where Julius Fortunatus was my dear friend.’

‘Some friend,’ said Felix coolly. ‘You were surprised to hear of his passing.’

‘ Felix Fortunatus . “Lucky Fortune.” That alone should have warned me, but I extended you the benefit of the doubt and let you stay while I waited to have records delivered. Tell me, Felix, how you respected my generosity. Or shall I tell you? By creeping into my son’s bedroom night after night?’

‘He’s teaching me to read.’

Lassius jabbed a finger in Felix’s face, but no spike of fear accompanied it. ‘Don’t take me for a fool, boy. Lorenus might be simple enough to take advantage of, but I’m not so easily swayed. Do you think yourself worth even a scrap of his attention?’

‘I didn’t realise you thought so highly of him.’

‘He’s a Lassius. It matters not how I regard him, but how the world sees him. There is nothing you can offer him.’ Lassius’s mouth curled. ‘Because you have nothing. You are nothing.’

If only Lassius knew, but Felix thought of Servius’s hand twisted sharp in his hair.

Never let the man holding the chips know what you care about.

Lassius was the same sort as Servius: men only dangerous if you let them open their mouth, let them twist your words into a weapon.

The worst blow Felix could deal was to say nothing at all.

He sidestepped, adjusting his packed bag on his shoulder, relishing the way Lassius’s jaw clenched, and carried on. Lassius might hold the chips, but Felix still had dice left to throw.

He started by saying goodbye.

Felix was practised in leaving. Slipping by nightfall from a town he’d never see again.

Parting ways with someone he’d known only long enough to dip a hand into their pocket.

Leaving behind identities, memories, possibilities.

Staying in the moment, history discarded, future disregarded. Running to live another day.

For the first time in his life, Felix had something to run towards. The idea of it set his nerves on fire. Went against everything he’d learned.

He couldn’t wait to break his own rules.

Loren’s bedroom was empty, curtains trailing wispy in the night breeze from open shutters, but Felix had a hunch when he spotted the glow of a lantern cutting through the dark outside.

He slipped through the servants’ exit and followed the light to the stables.

The grassy, musty smell of horses met him, animals stirring from their slumber, but Felix had eyes only for the stall at the end.

Caesar gave a soft whinny at his approach.

Loren didn’t look over. His cane leaned against the wall, and he smoothed a boar-bristle brush down Caesar’s flank in methodical strokes.

‘Caesar is a silly name,’ he said, voice strained. ‘She’s a mare, and I doubt the emperor would be impressed.’

‘She’s a horse,’ Felix corrected, ‘and if Titus wants a word, he’ll have a chance soon enough.’

Loren fiddled with the saddle strap. ‘I should ask where you plan to go from here, but with the dream I keep having, I think I can guess.’

‘Mercury’s temple,’ Felix said. ‘I want to know the truth.’