Page 113 of Vesuvius

He did all he knew to do. He fell, and let impulse catch him.

With the last of his conscious strength, Loren curled limp fingers around a stone and dashed it across Maxim’s temple. Pressure on his neck lifted. Air rushed into his starved body. Every inch of him hurt. Loren threw his weight into a roll, so Maxim, face oozing red, now lay below him. Maxim grunted and struggled, big hands grabbing, but Loren brought the stone down again.

And again.

Time blurred.

Maxim stilled.

Loren’s throat closed off.

‘Loren, love, that’s enough.’ Gentle hands pulled him back, prised the stone from his numb grip. Livia had picked her way into the ravine.

‘I killed him,’ Loren gasped. His cheeks were hot. Wet. A moment passed before he registered he was crying, chest heaving in painful sobs. Nothing felt real. Nothing felt like him.

‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ Livia said, terribly soft.

Cleaned up?Loren looked down and fought back vomit at his own hands coated in bright blood. Impossible to tell how much was his and how much was Maxim’s. He gagged, shivering, and emptied his stomach into the gravel.

When it was over, Livia coaxed him away, and they climbed to the road. Neither mentioned the body cooling below.

Up top, a streak of dark curls assailed Loren, arms wrapping tight around his middle. For a horrible moment, Loren flashed back to Maxim’s lunge, but it was only Aurelia, seeking comfort. He had none to offer.

Livia drew her off. ‘Give him space.’

Aurelia looked a wreck, but she seemed unhurt, and that eased something in Loren’s chest. Maxim couldn’t harm her, couldn’t harm Livia. Still, Loren couldn’t meet either of their eyes. He staggered to the horses, legs quaking. Shame slid sticky over his skin. When he’d driventhe stone home over and over, he hadn’t spared a thought for Aurelia or Livia. He’d thought only of his own animal desire to breathe again. Whatever had overcome him had sprung from a source truly foul, and Loren feared he knew exactly which one.

When Felix told Loren he lived by his heart, he couldn’t have known Loren’s heart was spoiled. Poisoned. He was every inch a selfish creature, inside and out.

Loren’s mare was still trembling, spooked from the attack and the quake, but he ran a soothing palm down her flank, and she settled. A fat waterskin hung from her saddlebag. Unstopping it, he poured it over his arms, scrubbing with his nails until the trickling water tinted pink, then, finally, clear. When he restrung the pouch, his eye caught on embossed leather tooled into the saddle, a seal he’d neglected to examine before.

Loren could return to Maxim’s body, pluck the crest of Servius from the man’s still chest, hold it to the saddle side by side, but he didn’t need to. The swooping hawk was pressed into his memory, deeper than any embossing.

Soft footsteps crept behind him. Loren knew their owner without looking.

He kept his voice calm. ‘Who secured us these horses, Aurelia? Because they never belonged to Celsi.’

No reply.

‘What did Felix tell you?’ Loren wiped a palm across his face, flinching when it came back smeared with more gore. Sudden desperation burst, and he rounded on her. ‘What did he trade away?’

Aurelia’s stunned silence melted. ‘He found me at Pappa’s grave this morning, said he had an errand to run, and he’d bring the horses after. H-he knew about your visions. Mine, too.’

‘He suspected something would happen.’ Even after Loren, brimming with arrogance, assured Felix in the grove that all wouldturn out all right. ‘His senses are that sharp. He offered you an escape. So long as—’

‘You came with us.’ Her face crumpled.

Loren’s mind reeled. Felix’s cruelty in the alley struck him as less abrupt now, more calculated.Go homehadn’t been one final nasty blow to Loren’s ribs. It had been a lifesaving plea.

‘Jupiter, Aurelia, why did you lie to me? To us?’ Livia shook her daughter’s shoulders, but Aurelia tore away.

‘Because,’ she said, hiccupping through a choked sob, ‘if Loren goes, we’ll never see him again. And I can’t lose my brother.’

Her words slid home, and Loren understood her in a way he hadn’t before. These weren’t the wailing cries of a little girl fixated on the worst-case scenario. They were the wailing cries of a girl who’d seen the outcome.

Loren braced against a tree, staring hard at the horizon. Underfoot, the ground shivered again. Far off, Vesuvius raged, a blight against the clear sky, Pompeii doomed in its shadow, with everyone still stuck there.

Felix, still stuck there.

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