Page 78 of Vesuvius

‘I know better than to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong—’

‘Could have fooled me.’

‘But that’s quite the secret. You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’

Sweat dampened Loren’s braid. He turned sideways to shimmy between the tunnel wall and an outcropping. ‘You saw through me from the start. Rich boy playing at being poor. Why hand you another arrow for your quiver?’

Felix hummed. ‘Strange to give that up in exchange for scraps.’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Help me to.’

Loren chanced a glance back. Felix’s face wasn’t mocking, but he almost wished it were. Anything would be easier than this. ‘I told you that night at Julia’s, there are expectations of me. My parents have a framework for how the world ought to work. They don’t tolerate much beyond it. When you’re Lucius Lassius’s son, there’s no room for being different.’

He wet his lips, then added, ‘Four years with the Temple of Isis got me nowhere. Umbrius and the council wanted nothing to do with meuntil I caught Julia’s eye, and you saw how that ended. I ran from home when I was twelve. Now on the edge of seventeen, I’ve done nothing to cement myself in Pompeii to stop my father dragging me back.’

‘Your father knows you came here?’

‘You don’t become one of the wealthiest men in the empire without connections. He has eyes everywhere. He’s indulged me, letting me stay this long.’ Loren’s thoughts were scrambled. He tried to sort through them, order them in a way Felix might understand. ‘My father has no other heir. Unlike Julia, he’d rather be run over by the Roman cavalry than have the Lassius name passed to someone not of his blood. He needs me trapped.’

‘Would that be so terrible?’

‘To have no say in your life? To have everything about you dictated, from the way you wear your hair to who you sleep with? To restrict your world to a few acres of land when you know you could do more, if only they’d listen? Yes, Felix. It would.’

Silence. The torch flared.

‘See,’ said Felix, ‘that’s where we differ. I’d give anything to have what you gave up. Stability. Something certain. A home.’

‘It was never a home to me.’

‘Easy to say when you chose to walk away.’

Loren swallowed, eyes stinging. He blinked rapidly, but his vision blurred.

‘But I meant it,’ Felix said. ‘You aren’t going back there.’

He had no idea how dangerous it was to say things like that. Had Loren not been on the verge of tears or holding a flaming stick in a dark, smelly tunnel, he might have confessed how afraid he was to add Felix to his list of burned bridges.

Gods, Loren was sick of losing.

Another beat of silence.

Felix asked, ‘Is it me, or did it get lighter?’

Lowering the torch and squinting only worsened Loren’s headache. ‘How could you possibly tell?’

‘Maybe your eyesight is shit.’

‘Maybe you’re full of . . .’ Loren bit his tongue and wheeled around, scowling. ‘I don’t curse. Stop trying to make me.’

‘You said “fuck” last night.’

That smirk was insufferable. Loren wanted to shove Felix against the wall. Better yet, have Felix crowd Loren in, press their chests together and—

He kept walking.

But maddeningly, Felix was right. Not a full minute later, Loren realised he could make out the texture of the wall beyond the torch’s reach. What had started as a handful of degrees became a shock of brightness as they emerged from the dark into an open-air pit. Stone spires jutted from the ground, crooked as broken fingers and riddled with minuscule, blistered pockmarks.

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