Page 120 of Vesuvius

Loren thrashed as Darius wrenched him forward by the braid. Horror flooded Felix, rooting his bones in stasis. At Servius’s feet, Celsi made an aborted attempt to intervene, but a hand on his shoulder stilled him. Darius forced Loren’s head into the flames. His hair caught. A wrecked cry tore from his throat, a sound that would ricochet in Felix’s mind until the day he died.

Adrenaline surged, and Felix hurled the helmet into a sea of white-dusted grass. Servius’s brows shot up, the most emotion he’d ever displayed. Then Felix upended the smouldering altar bowl in Servius’s face. A coward’s trick, but cowards outlived heroes for a reason. Engulfed by the close cloud of stinging embers, Servius coughed and lashed out. Felix lunged for Loren, but a hand dragged him backwards across the altar by the neck of his tunic. Stone scraped his skin.

Felix grappled and twisted. He would have liked to think he was the craftier of the two, but the drug still clung like sap to his senses. He gripped Servius’s clothes, seeking leverage. Weight jostled in his pocket, his favourite knife reclaimed on the same trip to the study to fetch the helmet. If he could only work his hand down—

‘I’ll show you if I must.’ One hand clutching Felix’s throat, Servius peeled the glove off the other with his teeth. ‘I didn’t think you would need this much convincing.’

Shock rocked through Felix at the sight of Servius’s hand, bare at last, bleached white and covered in thick scar tissue. Utterly ruined, damaged past hope of healing. The helmet had done that to Servius. The same silver that welcomed Felix’s touch. If the helmet’s power did that, what else could it do? What else –

‘Impolite to stare,’ Servius snarled. He cupped Felix’s jaw.

– couldFelixdo?

Skin met skin, and Felix fell backwards through time.

Chapter XXVI

LOREN

When Felix had said Loren ran towards fire, surely he hadn’t meant a funeral pyre.

Darius’s grip was unrelenting, even as fire licked his hands. Loren twisted, a final effort to protect his face. Not that it mattered. Flames crept up his tunic, his neck, snared his braid. Soon his whole body would burn.

His eyes stung, the only sensation he could parse. The fire’s roar swallowed the rest. He thrashed, clawing Darius. Blistering heat ate and ate. Smoke choked him. Tears dried as fast as they formed. Loren had fled all the way to Pompeii and he still couldn’t breathe. He may as well have died beneath Maxim’s fist.

The memory inspired fresh conviction, and Loren kicked. His sandal slapped leather. With a quiet grunt, Darius’s hold loosened.

Freedom. Loren squirmed loose and rolled away from the blaze, patting his braid, his tunic, his flesh. Fibre came away in ashen clumps. The hair on his arms had singed to cinders. Every inch of him smarted. Gasping, he rose to his knees and squinted at the scene.

Something had shifted while Loren was in the fire, a change in energy, but he couldn’t put a finger on what, only that a low hum now eclipsed the distant thundering of the mountain. Celsi had vanished,hopefully fled somewhere far away. Ash and embers obscured Felix and Servius at the altar, and bronze glinted in the grass – it seemed Loren wasn’t the only one capable of weaponising a bowl. The two were locked in a grapple across the podium, Servius clutching the sides of Felix’s face.

Felix, it appeared, was losing.

Pushing to his feet, Loren took a single wobbly step. His respite didn’t last. Darius, recovered from the blow, re-engaged. His sword had vanished in the dark sea of rubble, but he had his body. He lunged. Loren sidestepped the grab and used the momentum to swing himself onto Darius’s back, winding his arms around Darius’s thick neck and tightening. Brutal but efficient. And Loren had learned it from Darius himself.

For a moment, Darius scrabbled. Then his whole body went lax. Loren slipped free. No sooner had he let go than a big hand gripped his ankle and tugged. He fell. Hard.

A feint, Ghost-Felix muttered in the back of Loren’s head.So easily tricked.

‘Shut up,’ Loren growled.

Darius pinned Loren, forearm to chest. ‘Didn’t say anything.’

‘Wasn’t talking to you.’ Loren wriggled. ‘But if you want a conversation, should we discuss the state of your balls?’

‘My—’ Darius cut off with a groan as Loren’s knee jabbed up. Another thrust, and he backed off.

Loren tumbled free, panting, and scrambled for the flash of iron he’d seen while prone. Not his sword, but it would do. He trained the blade at Darius’s chest. ‘I don’t want to kill you the way I did Maxim. So don’t move.’

Darius stilled. ‘Maxim is dead?’

‘Don’t. Move.’

Then Loren sprinted for Felix, his only pillar standing in a world turned to rubble.

Or not standing. Felix sagged in the grass, eyes shut, face cradled in Servius’s bare palms. Blood trickled from Felix’s nose, down his chin,dark droplets on his tunic front. Ice-cold fury washed through Loren’s veins. He raised his sword for the final slash.

‘Put that down,’ Servius said, never breaking from Felix. ‘Don’t come closer.’

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