Page 6 of Vesuvius

She hurried to Loren’s side, brushing the boy’s curls back for a better look at his blood-drained face. He couldn’t be much older than Loren’s age, sixteen. ‘Gods, Loren, what did you do to him? Is he alive?’

‘It was anaccident.’ Loren yanked off his smothering veil. ‘Well, I hit him, but only because he frightened me.’

‘He attacked you?’

Loren laughed, a choked little noise. There was another point in his defence: anyone who witnessed the brutality he endured nightly would have reacted the same, bowl and all. But Camilia didn’t believe his dreams. She had already made that clear.

She checked the boy’s pulse. ‘Still beating. Good. I don’t know what we’d do if we had to hide a body.’

Too late, Loren caught her teasing tone. But the joke didn’t hit. He was too overwhelmed by the confirmation that he hadn’t, in fact, killed someone. He scrapped his defence tally – no murder, no murder trial.

Together they lugged the thief, as the guard called him, into the private quarters. No sooner had they settled him on a chaise than he stirred, lashes fluttering and lips parting. Camilia frowned. From hertunic pocket, she withdrew a vial. Uncorking it, she dripped liquid into his open mouth.

‘Diluted poppy sap,’ she explained. ‘Should keep him quiet for a few hours until we work out what to do with him.’

‘You carry that in your nightclothes?’

‘Helps me sleep. Must be careful, though. It’s potent.’ She tucked the vial away. ‘He’s handsome, isn’t he? Look at that clever jaw.’

Despite their circumstances, Loren’s cheeks burned, and he pretended for the world that the thief had no jaw at all, let alone a clever one.Gods. ‘I thought you weren’t attracted to boys. Men.’

‘I still have eyes.’ She left Loren kneeling by the couch to fix a toppled stool. ‘How did the building fare?’

Loren blinked. The thief’s arrival had caught him so off guard he’d nearly forgotten the quake. ‘No major damage, I think, but I didn’t inspect. Castor and Pollux bolted. I don’t know when we’ll see them again.’

He tore his eyes from the rise and fall of the boy’s chest and scooted back. Distance eased his rattled nerves. Pulling his hair over his shoulder, he picked apart his sleep-mussed braid and started to redo it. It wasn’t until he reached the end that he realised his hands were still trembling.

‘Loren?’

He jumped when Camilia touched his shoulder. Craning his neck, he offered a half smile.

She met it with a frown. ‘Are you all right?’

‘The quake put me on edge.’

‘You were here early.’

‘Thought I’d start the chores.’

‘Well-timed that you were here, with the quake.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Well-timed that the altar flame had already been put out. That the bowl wasn’t on the altar at all.’

So she had noticed. Loren gnawed his lip.

‘Tell me you weren’t trying to scry again,’ Camilia snapped. ‘Tell me you aren’t possibly that—’

Loren didn’t have the patience to rehash this same argument after a night of no sleep. He knew it wasn’t his place to scry. He knew he upset the divine order of Olympus by being a ‘non-ordained oracle with a penchant for meddling’, or however Camilia phrased it. The last thing he needed was to be reminded of his own delusion. Again.

‘We should return to the courtyard,’ Loren said tersely. ‘If the quake woke you, it’s only a matter of time before the Priest arrives.’

Camilia levelled him with one final glare before sweeping from the room.

The thief shifted, but lost in the deep pool of poppy sap, he didn’t stir other than a brief furrow of his brow, as if he too saw unpleasantries in his sleep. Loren could’ve laughed if the situation at all warranted it. Instead, he felt ill.

If the thief woke, would he reach for a knife? Would he become the lifeless, cruel ghost Loren was all too intimate with? Burn the city, the way he did in Loren’s dreams? Which of his friends would the thief cut down?

How long until the thief collapsed Pompeii’s sky, with all of them trapped beneath?

Loren came to Pompeii with hopes of using his gift to help. To prove his value beyond his family name. But his visions only showed hurt, with no way he could fathom to stop it.

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