Camilia spun and strode out.
Loren nearly knocked the lantern off the dais as he scrambled up. What a sight that would’ve made, to watch the temple catch fire from one clumsy act. Story of his life. He stabilised the lantern and poured what remained of the wine backinto the jug.
At the altar, Camilia crackled like a summer storm. Loren approached her cautiously, bowl held as a peace offering. She snatched it, slammed it down and busied herself lighting a fire.
‘Your hands are trembling,’ Loren said after her third attempt to strike flint failed. Wrong move. He had never solved a problem by talking more.
She rounded on him, eyes glossy. ‘Hold your tongue for once. I warned you to mind yourself months ago. I told you not to follow this path. Still, you sneak around and pretend we don’t notice. You reek of desperation.’
‘I’m only trying to help.’
‘Help yourself, you mean.’
Tear pricked the corners of Loren’s eyes. Wine dripped a slow beat from his sodden robes. ‘I amnotselfish.’
Camilia huffed and pressed the flint into his hand. ‘Light it. Go on.’
Loren clutched the sharp stone until it threatened to pierce his skin, add a trickle of blood to his mess. ‘I don’t know how.’
‘Right. You never had to learn. Someone did it for you.’
Loren tugged the cord around his neck, twisting it in his fingers. She didn’t know the truth about where he came from. Nobody did. But Camilia was always quick to notice little things, like how Loren couldn’t do laundry when he was new to the temple but knew the difference between weaves of fine silk. How he could write in three languages but couldn’t mail a letter.
‘I see things, Camilia.’ His throat bobbed. ‘Horrible things. And I know they’re set to happen. I came to Pompeii to learn how to stop them.’
‘You have bad dreams. Not visions.’
‘Why don’t you believe me?’
‘Because you’re delusional. Because you think you’re an oracle, and you aren’t. You can’t have a nightmare and decide it’s the future. That isn’t how it works.’
‘But just now—’
‘Look around you.’ Camilia jabbed at the altar, the cella, the door that led to the rest of Pompeii. ‘Look beyond yourself for a moment. Quakes shaking the city, that helmet going missing – the gods are angry, yet you continue to disrespect them. There are tracks to become an augur for a reason. Go beg Umbrius to let you into the Temple of Jupiter if you’re that desperate to pursue it. Or if you want to play-act so badly, join the theatre.’
Unsurprising that they were rehashing the same argument from six months ago when Loren first tried confiding in her, after his dreams showed him, concretely, Pompeii’s doom. Back then, she’d laughed in his face.
Now she’d sooner slap him.
Loren set the flint on the altar. Wordlessly, Camilia lit the flame with a single stroke, and the crackle-pop of incense filled the silence. He kept his lips pressed in shame. Something soft brushed his ankles. Pollux. Or Castor? Telling them apart was hard enough even when tears didn’t blur his vision.
‘I wish Celsi hadn’t left. I wish you hadn’t replaced him.’ Camilia scrubbed her face and hastened to procure more herbs to burn.
Loren stood rooted at the altar as her blow crept beneath his skin. Her story had never been a secret: a child when her family died, the temple had stepped in to raise her. Celsi became like a younger brother to her, but his father soon struck it rich and moved up in society, taking his son away from the dregs of Isis. For Camilia, the wound of losing Celsi never healed. As much as Loren had tried to fill Celsi’s absence in the years since, he was cut in a shape that didn’t fit.
‘Loren,’ said the Priest of Isis.
Habit drove Loren to turn and dip his head in obeisance, a motion he hardly felt. The Priest leaned heavily on his walking stick, quietly stern. Loren hadn’t heard him enter the temple at all. He wondered how long the old man had stood there, how much of their fight he’d heard.
‘Good evening, Priest.’ Loren nodded again for the sake of doing something. ‘I’ll fetch a stool.’
A gnarled hand gripped Loren’s forearm before he could dash. ‘Where is the boy you are protecting?’
‘I left him in my room. We thought it best he stays out of sight for now.’
Which made it sound like a mutual decision, and not Loren keeping Felix in a tight cage while he puzzled through the mystery alone.
‘Out of others’ sight, or yours?’ The Priest frowned. His eyes, normally clouded by haze, shot an arrow straight through Loren. ‘You should be with him.’
