He took stock of his situation. Horizontal, as expected. On a soft chaise, less expected. The room was silent and dim, but his vision adjusted quickly. The style of bricks suggested the building was much older than the statesman’s house, meaning Felix hadn’t been given back to Darius following the bowl attack. Somehow, that didn’t make him feel better. He suspected he wouldn’t feel anything but uncomfortable until he was far from Pompeii’s gates.
Too much had happened here. Too many people acted like they knew him.
A low rumble broke the quiet and, for a bleary moment, Felix wondered if the earth was shaking again. But it was only the cat, calmand content and shaped like a bread loaf, blinking slow. Felix was at a loss.
He blinked back.
A door creaked.
‘You’ve met Castor,’ a familiar voice said. Too familiar, given that he’d only spoken two words before snuffing Felix’s lights out. ‘The Egyptians believed cats see what humans can’t. Is it a good sign he’s taken to you so readily?’
‘Here to finish me off? Seeing how the bowl and the’ – Felix smacked his lips once more to be certain – ‘poison didn’t do the job?’
The boy moved into the orange glow of a sconce, casting his olive skin warm. Tall and thin with half his face still veiled, he was unmistakably the lunatic from the cella steps, though he’d lost the scarf swathing his head. Long dark hair lay braided over his shoulder. He wore the garments of a low-ranking temple worker and held a covered basket.
‘Poppy sap can’t kill you.’
‘You would be surprised,’ Felix said darkly. Twice in a matter of hours it’d been used against him in Pompeii. Maybe everybody in this backwater shithole lacked creativity.
The boy sighed and shut the door softly, closing them in. Felix repressed twisting unease. Being trapped with a stranger, in a temple no less, went against everything he’d ever learned. He brushed his hand down Castor’s back, eyeing the boy, who took a steadying breath, then tiptoed to crouch by the chaise. It took all Felix’s resolve not to cringe at the closeness.
At a cluck of the boy’s tongue, Castor leaped off Felix’s chest and slunk from sight.
Whatever. Felix didn’t miss the weight.
‘We don’t have much time before the others realise you’re awake,’ the boy said, half-muffled by his veil. From his basket, he withdrew a dish of fat purple grapes, glistening damp. ‘I brought you these, and bandages for your legs.’
Felix’s mouth watered. He hadn’t eaten in ages, and he had a fondness for grapes besides, regardless of their stage of fermentation. Still, he hesitated. This boy had bashed in Felix’s head, yet now tempted him with niceties. It didn’t add up.
Kindness came with limits. If not a limit, a price. Who knew what the boy might demand in exchange for a handful of grapes?
‘Not hungry,’ Felix lied. ‘Can I go?’
The boy set the dish at the foot of the chaise. ‘I can tend your wounds, if you want.’
‘I don’t,’ Felix said, the truth this time. ‘Can I go?’
With another huff, the boy scrutinised Felix’s face. His searching expression, like trying to solve a puzzle, made Felix’s tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. It reminded him of how guards judged him on sight alone, wanting to pin him with any number of crimes if only because of his threadbare tunic and shifty disposition.
Whatever the boy looked for, he didn’t seem pleased with what he found.
‘Question for question,’ he declared. ‘To answer yours, no. You can’t leave. Not until we’re finished with you. But I’ll let you ask another.’
How generous. Body aching, Felix sat up. It was worth the pain not to be prone under a stranger’s gaze. ‘Fine. Do you have a name?’
The boy blinked. ‘That’s what you most want to know?’
‘Is that your question?’
‘No.’ Above his veil, across the bridge of his freckled nose, spilled a deep red flush. ‘My name is Loren.’
Satisfaction spread through Felix’s chest. He didn’t care much for rules beside his own. Following rules didn’t mean shit when you were bleeding out in an alley. But he did hold tight to something his father had drilled into him when he was small:learn the names of those you deal with.Know whose name to thank.
More importantly, whose name to curse. Cursing Loren would taste especially delicious when Felix escaped.
‘Your turn.’ Only the slightest bit smug, Felix began wrapping the gashes on his legs.
Loren cast him an icy look at odds with the lingering fluster still on his face. ‘I want to be in this situation even less than you do, believe it or not –’
