Page 132 of Vesuvius

‘He’s dead,’ Loren said flatly. ‘So I hope not. And no. He also made a pastime of telling me what I didn’t want to hear. Even when I needed to hear it.’

Felix kept his distance, idling by the door, scanning the room for the dozenth time, as though it might reveal fresh secrets. But the drapes on the walls stayed up, masking Loren’s childhood frescoes – so what if he’d peeked? The bed stood neatly made. Gauzy curtains drifted in the breeze of the open shutters, the same draft stirring Loren’s chin-length hair.

So much had been lost. So much sacrificed for nothing. Anger at it all ate Felix alive, but when he spoke, he found he could barely muster more than a hard edge.

‘You warned me,’ Felix said at last. ‘You stopped me from putting the helmet on. Then you stopped Servius from undoing the mind block. You believed if my memories were triggered, it would make me dangerous.’

Time dragged as Loren stared hard at his knees, clothed in the white fall of his sleeping tunic. ‘I met a version of you. The ghost who haunted my dreams, who showed me Pompeii’s fate. He held your memories.’

‘Held my power, you mean.’

‘Felix. It was more than that. He held . . .’ Loren swallowed. ‘He held your anger, and he wanted you to take a turn carrying it. When you told me you feared what lay behind the wall of your memory, I couldn’t be the one to give him back to you.’

‘Jupiter.’ Felix scrubbed a ruined hand across his weary face, then sank onto the edge of the bed when his knees weakened. ‘You were right about one thing. You’re selfish. But in a way that’s so selfless it’s hard to recognise.’

‘I drew the wrong conclusion. I thought you and the helmet would wreck the city, when truly you were drawn to Pompeii to help its deadfind rest afterwards. That the mountain . . . I was wrong. All I wanted was to protect you from what the ghost knew.’

‘But don’t you see? That’s exactly it. You go into every situation thinking you can solve it, because you were never taught that some problems can’t be both solved and survived. Your whole life, you’ve never had to question your selfishness. From the day we met, you didn’t hesitate to take from me, too, same as everyone else. My body. My memories. My choice.’ Felix’s voice trembled. He flexed his scarred fingers, testing his reflexes. ‘Is your opinion of my character so low? That if I remembered, I’d use that power to take in turn? I’m not defined by what Mercury’s priest did to me.’

‘I believe you,’ Loren whispered. ‘Felix, I’m sorry.’

‘I know you are, and that’s the worst part. I know you thought you were protecting me, same as my father when he took my memories away. But it should have beenmydecision. Mine, to learn my heritage on my terms.’ Desperation burned his throat. He slid from the bed and knelt beside the window seat, grabbing Loren’s hand and pressing it to his cheek. Felix closed his eyes. ‘If Servius could reach into my mind, can’t you as well? Couldn’t you . . .’

Fingers trembled cold against Felix’s face. Loren’s voice turned fear-thick. ‘Felix, I don’t—’

‘Couldn’t you?’

‘No.’ Loren wrenched his hand away as though bitten and jerked as far back as the window allowed. Tears wet his cheeks, reddened his eyes. ‘I don’t trust myself not to have an agenda, even if it was protecting you. But I could learn. I would spend the rest of my life studying how. I’d meet with every augur, every priest, in every city until I could do it without hurting you. If that’s what you ask of me, I will.’

Felix rocked back from his knees to his heels and took a steadying breath. Grief, pain, anger swirled in a concoction bitter as poppy sap in his belly. Too much to handle. When he stood, his stomach lurched. ‘Iwon’t ask that. I don’t want you knowing how to do that to me. But can I not be angry? With the helmet’s magic burned up, I might never know, not fully. My power might never be mine.’

‘You never wanted power,’ Loren whispered. ‘You said so.’

‘It’s never been an option. Everyone – my father, Servius,you –made sure of that.’ Felix cast Loren one last, tracing look, committing him to memory. ‘Should have been my choice.’

He left before his resolve could break.

Caesar – the poor horse Felix had inexplicably included in his radius of protection in Pompeii, whom he had then felt obliged to name with the highest title of all – lifted her head when he burst into the stables. Three days’ recovery wasn’t long enough for the hell he’d put her through, but Felix swallowed his guilt as he saddled her and swung onto her back. At least she didn’t seem to mind. She tossed her brushed mane as he brought her to a trot on the paved lane leading away from the estate, then worked her to a gallop on the main road, startling a burst of starlings from their autumn branches.

It should have felt good, the breeze, the sun, the flex of Caesar’s muscles. The freedom.

But Felix couldn’t breathe out here, either. Black closed around his vision, throwing him back to the swallow of the pitch-dark wave. That was what he kept returning to. Over and over, a waking nightmare: he never intended to survive.

He didn’t mean that in some grand, self-sacrificing way. Heroism wasn’t his style. It was more . . . it would be easier. Cleaner, if Felix never left Pompeii. If the truth died with him.

But the world moved in messy arcs, and he’d startled awake, still in his body, clutching fragments of the only power he’d ever known. Mercury had saved both, when Felix only meant for him to save one. There was an implication there, but he still didn’t have the head – or heart – to interrogate it.

So he’d done the only thing his stunned bones knew. Move. Same as he did now. Anything to escape being forced to think.

The road from the estate wound around the curve of a shallow valley, then over a rocky hillside. Felix clutched Caesar’s reins with numb fingers, ruined fingers, and fought the sting in his eyes. Blame that on the wind. Caesar picked up speed, kicking road dust, but at the crest of the hill, Felix cracked.

Yanking the horse to a stop, he did something he swore he wouldn’t do.

He looked back.

Back at the sprawling vineyard, acres and acres of it, trellises blushing orange in the sunset. The orchard where he’d laid the helmet to rest. Felix had buried himself on this estate, too, and now he was leaving behind the only boy who’d brought out the best in him. The boy who saw him, even as he slipped through life unseen.

Felix wondered if Loren was watching his flight, dead-eyed from his bedroom window. He wondered how Loren would grieve him. If the grief would fade like a bruise over time, or ache for the rest of his life, a bone fracture healed wrong.

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