‘No. No.’ Felix pushed to his elbows. ‘It wasn’t your fault. Stopping it was never in my power. Nor yours.’
Loren was splintering, drawing air into lungs marred by a thousand hairline fractures, a vase about to shatter. ‘My dreams stopped, Felix. You should have left me to die in the city. What use am I if the only thing that set me apart meant nothing in the end?’
Shock flitted across Felix’s face, followed by fury. ‘Don’t say that. Never say that. I’ll tell you the alternative. You survive and heal and stop blaming yourself for what you didn’t understand.’
‘It isn’t that easy.’
‘You think I don’t know? I watched my father die and did nothing because sometimes there’s nothing you can do exceptrun. It’s shit. But it doesn’t make you a coward. It means you’re too strong to let yourself be torn apart. You keep moving.’
A dam burst in Loren’s chest, and the sea of grief drowning him spilled out at once. He cried, body-shaking sobs. Wordlessly, Felix flopped onto his back again and leaned his head on Loren’s shoulder, that point of contact a lifeline.
Felix was solid and present and there, fixed as the moon, but far, far more reachable.
‘How can you still want me,’ Loren choked, dragging an arm across his wet cheeks, ‘after everything I’ve done?’
A scarred hand worked between the gap of their bodies, caught Loren’s fingers.
Felix looked over, grey eyes sparkling. ‘I like a challenge.’
Chapter XXXI
FELIX
One afternoon in the orchard, Felix sensed a call in the rustling leaves of a changing season.
Time to go.
Not that he needed the trees to tell him. This was the longest he’d stayed in one place since escaping Rome all those years ago, and he’d worn his welcome thin. He was more resilient than most, but there were only so many sidelong glances from Lucius Lassius anyone could endure before taking the hint.
The afternoon was mellow for late autumn, the bare hint of a breeze whistling through the foliage overhanging the stone bench Felix sat on. Pomegranate juice dribbled down his wrist and splattered in the dirt.
‘If you splash that on my parchment,’ Loren warned from beside him, ‘my father will have a stroke.’
‘All the more reason for me not to touch it,’ Felix said.
‘These are meant to be your lessons.’
A scroll lay unfurled between them, Loren’s cane serving as a paperweight. Narrow sunlight tinted his chin-length hair bronze, and he wore a leather band across his crown to tame fly-aways. Dressed in a wine-coloured tunic that drew out the warm tones of his skin, Loren looked healthy. Proper. Patrician. So different from the wraith in awhite sleeping shirt Felix had spent many nights trailing through the vineyard.
He didn’t realise he was staring until he squeezed the pomegranate too hard and red seeds burst across his numb fingers. Droplets sprayed.
‘Felix!’ Loren glared, but not for long. His lips twitched and then he snorted, and Felix snorted, and they dissolved into giggles.
‘Sorry,’ Felix said, not feeling sorry at all. He gave up on the pomegranate, tossed it aside and wiped clean his pocketknife.
The laughter died in Loren’s mouth. His eyes had snagged on the knife.
‘I think about him,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘The ghost I met in my dreams. The one who . . .’
‘Remembered,’ finished Felix.
‘I haven’t seen him since.’ Loren ducked his head, and the day frosted over. ‘I have more to say to him. Apologies. Questions. I walk laps around an empty temple for hours, searching in vain. I wonder if he found closure, now that you recall some of what happened, but that seems naive to hope.’
Felix frowned, unsure how to carry on. They’d grown back together in a quiet way, stealing bits of time, frail and fleeting as a petal. But this they hardly addressed. Loren’s guilt split them in an ugly gash, divided down the middle with no bridge Felix could find to cross.
Loren wasn’t the same boy Felix had met in Pompeii. Unlike Felix, Loren had no frame of reference for this type of loss, no experience to work from. Small noises startled him. Smiles were rare, laughter rarer still. Most days, Felix didn’t know if his being near Loren hurt or helped. Because for all the good spending time together did, Loren’s irritability tolerance was near non-existent. He’d snap, then withdraw, and Felix could do little else besides sit with him until the episode passed.
Good thing Felix now had fresh practice sitting still.
