Page 124 of Vesuvius

‘I never – I never wanted you to kill anyone. Not for me.’

That sensitivity towards death again. Loren’s scattered thoughts rearranged at a breakneck pace. Dozens of questions grew and died on his tongue.

‘Well, good news. I’m selfish.’ Loren picked his way over to sheathe Livia’s gladius. Adrenaline made him sound braver than he was. ‘Pretend I did it for myself if it eases your conscience.’

Above, the sky churned, noxious greys blending in a heavy swirl. Ready to collapse. Soon.Black wave. Copper streak.

Dust coated the helmet, and Felix rubbed it clean. What once gleamed silver was now tarnished. Decayed, if metal could rot.

Loren shuddered at the change. ‘You should leave it here.’

Silently, Felix shook his head, but he offered his empty hand. Feelings clashed in Loren’s chest, but need won over dignity. He needed this. Needed to know Felix was still corporeal, wasn’t yet a ghost. Loren wound their fingers together.

They ran, hand in hand, into the smothering dark.

Chapter XXVII

FELIX

Since he was a little boy, Felix had admired hands.

The measure of their strength. Their variety, some old and some new. Wrinkled or smooth. Frail or rugged. Their capacity for cruelty or kindness, sometimes by the same set of hands in moments back-to-back. Hands told a story that didn’t depend on the words Felix couldn’t read.

He’d loved his da’s hands most. Just the right size for holding his own. Quick as lightning striking, Da’ could make anything vanish then reappear before the eye blinked. Never callused or clumsy because, as he often reminded Felix, a fumble for a thief was as good as a death sentence. And he never fumbled, so neither did Felix.

But his father never predicted Felix’s clever fingers would one day get him into this much shit.

He raced down the ruined Via Stabiana, dragging Loren along. Loren’s hand slid with sweat where Felix clutched it with a desperation he’d never known. It threatened to slip free. He tightened his grip into an impossible vice. Gods help him, he wouldn’t lose Loren now, not the only thing he’d found worth holding on to.

The onlygoodthing. Felix also held something far more damning.

Mercury’s helmet had hummed to his touch in Servius’s courtyard, but now it vibrated, charged with sparking, furious power. Loren had beenright, it ought to have been left behind. But it belonged to Felix. In a world that had given him nothing of his own, not his body, not his memories, the helmet responded to him alone. He would carry it to world’s end.

Energy crackled. Memories rose to trip him, scenes triggered by Servius’s searching thumb.Twin snakes curling up his father’s arm, forked tongues darting. Bells laughing bright. A festival day.Felix wrestled the flood down, fighting to stay present. He didn’t –sleight of hand, a hundred coins in little pockets, and he pulled them out in a scatter and the others clapped and his da’s eyes crinkled and . . .

Felix willed his feet faster, feathery flames licking his heels.

Burning rock sprayed from above, rain of hellfire. Sticky smoke wrapped around him, thick and hot on his skin. The cries of those still trapped shredded Felix’s soul.

The market street stretched for ever, a road with no terminus. If he squinted through the haze, he could barely make out the gate in the distance.

Too far.

Felix didn’t need visions to know that Pompeii was about to be swallowed alive. It had reached its end. The last gasp. The final page. Death suffocated the city, agitated, wordless pleas only he could hear. He recognised the ghosts begging for rest, a familiar hum he could never put from his mind. Incorporeal hands grabbed his ankles, his clothes, willing him to reach back.

Felix wanted to. He wanted to slip a coin in every mouth, coax death to its long sleep.

He wanted more time.

‘Felix, I can’t,’ Loren wheezed, the grind of his lagging pace slowing them both.

‘You have to.’ Felix clenched his teeth against clouds of stinging ash. He kept moving. Moving was all he was good at. Running from his problems. Never facing them head-on.

Head-on meant danger, and Felix had never been brave.

‘My leg—’

‘Your leg won’t matter if you die.’ His lungs tightened, bursting with poisoned air. Ash burned inside to out. Every movement tore his muscles past what he could tolerate.

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