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‘And you don’t want . . .’ With a shaky breath, Loren screwed his eyes tight. ‘No. I told myself I wouldn’t say that. I knew this was coming, I’ve known all along. My duty is to stay here, and I can’t hold you back.’

‘Loren,’ Felix said, and when Loren looked over at last, Felix cupped his face and closed the gap.

Kissing Loren was like coming home. No – creating home.

Loren’s lips were salty, and had Felix not lost sensation in his palms, he would feel that Loren’s cheeks were damp.

Hot. He clung to the memory of the last time he’d felt Loren’s skin, back in the grove.

Not the same as touching him now, but better than enough.

Felix poured everything he had learned of love into the press of mouths, the exchange of breath: he wanted Loren, wanted him still.

Loren’s breathing hitched, and he pushed hard into Felix, desperate, begging, their noses knocking. When he pulled back, he looked brittle as a fallen leaf.

‘I’m going to Rome,’ Felix murmured, ‘because I know what I’m running to. When you figure out the same for you, meet me there.’

He moved Loren’s hand to rest on Caesar’s saddlebag and hoped – prayed – he’d understand. Not goodbye for ever. Just for now.

The sun hadn’t yet risen when Felix turned by foot onto the main road, but the streak of red on the horizon announced it wouldn’t stay dark long.

Stolen wine clanked in the satchel he had nabbed from Loren’s wardrobe – an old trick, but one that would fetch enough profit for passage on a merchant’s wagon headed north.

This all felt full circle in a way Felix hadn’t anticipated.

He thought this chapter of his life had begun in the Temple of Apollo, when the helmet snared his attention, but perhaps it had truly started the night he first stole from Lucius Lassius.

By degrees, the sky brightened, shades shifting from red and navy to a hazy pink and lavender dawn. Felix took the path that circled broad around the valley before snaking into the mountains. Gradually, the flat road switched to an incline, and he kept his pace slow.

Savouring.

A clatter of hooves disrupted the still morning.

‘Wait!’

Felix turned, heart stuttering with hope he hadn’t dared allow. Caesar charged towards him up the hill, kicking up a cloud, her rider’s glare furious and beautiful. She skidded, slowed, then clomped in a circle until still.

‘I made a mistake,’ Loren called, swinging from the saddle as gracefully as his plastered ankle allowed. His face was streaky, eyes red but bright. ‘As a boy, I was fixated on finding an Achilles, a man I’d follow to the ends of the earth, into death. But I was wrong. You’re no Achilles, Felix.’

A shocked laugh escaped Felix’s chest. ‘Did you run after me just for an insult?’

Loren’s chest heaved. ‘Achilles wouldn’t sneak off, leaving only a chance clue behind.’

In his hand, he clutched the contract, and Felix’s delight grew. ‘Whether you found it today or months from now, I knew eventually you would. And you’d know. All Julia’s properties still belong to you, but I needed you to make the choice to leave on your own.’

But Loren wasn’t smiling. His glare deepened, and finally it dawned on Felix that perhaps he’d erred. That he’d only managed to stir fresh guilt. His first ‘easy’ gesture gone very, very wrong.

‘I thought I dropped this during our escape. Celsi gave it to me.’ Loren shook the pages.

‘In the courtyard. I didn’t realise what it was.

What he tried to do, even after I treated him so poorly.

He resented me from the moment I took his position in the temple.

But I resented him, too, for being what I wasn’t. ’

‘Celsi was a child,’ Felix said, choosing his words carefully, ‘but so were you when you met. Servius hurt him, same as he hurt you.’

‘And you.’ Loren wiped his nose with the arm of his tunic. ‘So you found the contract, then hid it. Why not keep it for yourself? Without Julia around to say otherwise, her property could have been yours.’

‘I might not have much to offer you, but I wouldn’t leave you with nothing. A contract and a horse to get you there when you were ready. When you knew what you wanted.’ When you chose me back , Felix didn’t say.

Loren sobered further, gaze dropping as his anger drained.

He bundled the papers back together before returning them to the saddlebag.

Then he slipped free his cane from a loop of Caesar’s reins, beside which a familiar sheathed sword hung.

Time passed before he gathered words to say, so different from his old style of blurting whatever crossed his mind.

‘You’re no Achilles, but neither am I,’ Loren said at last. ‘It seems so silly, but I used to picture being a hero like that. Glory in battle, fighting for honour, all of it. Now I can only imagine the stink of death and ash.’

‘There’s a reason heroes die young. The grief never leaves. They bow out early to avoid what they can.’ Felix studied him. ‘Maybe you could try being just Loren.’

‘Just Loren.’ Loren rolled the words, testing their weight on his tongue. He smiled. Small, but genuine. Small, but hopeful. ‘I think I’d like that, Just Felix.’

Felix may well have swallowed the sun, the way his chest warmed. He could practise easy gestures later. For now, he had his most complicated heist yet to carry out.

‘Convenient that you’re headed to Rome,’ Loren continued. ‘If I’m ever to break into politics as Loren Fortunatus, it won’t be done stuck in my father’s vineyard. You can go with me.’

Felix laughed. ‘Shouldn’t it be the other way around?’

‘I’m not following you.’ Loren grabbed the reins and guided Caesar onto the road, but paused, glancing back. ‘I told you, I made a mistake trying to find an Achilles. But, for what it’s worth, I’d rather walk with you.’

Felix’s mouth tugged into a smile, even as Loren took off, cane in one hand, extending his other back for Felix to take. Dust swirled around Loren’s ankles, reflecting in the golden streak of light spilling over the horizon.

Until, at last, it settled.

And Felix did what he’d always done, what his bones and blood ached for. He oriented himself to the rising sun, and just – started moving.