‘Don’t apologise,’ she said. ‘I value your counsel. And call me Julia. Goodness, even my servants aren’t this deferential. Just the other day, Clovia had the nerve to suggest I need a good . . . Ah. Inappropriate anecdote. She thinks I ought to seek a suitor. Marry.’ Her nose wrinkled, and she paced to the other side of the desk.
Loren gaped.
Absently correcting a mark on her tablet, Julia continued, ‘Not that I haven’t had offers. When my father was alive, he rejected them all. They want the estate. The name. Never me. You understand now why I prefer our alternative means of securing an heir. I despise the entire institution of marriage.’
‘I’d drink to that,’ Loren said weakly.
‘Shall we?’ Julia tipped her cup in his direction, and Loren met it with his own. Metal clinked. ‘A toast to forging our own paths.’
‘To partnership,’ he added, ‘that means something.’
‘To families built, not born.’
Fragile hope dared take root in Loren’s chest as they each took a sip, emboldened when familiar sticky sweetness washed across his tongue. Lassius wine. For once, the taste didn’t drag him down.
Heavy footsteps interrupted from the hall, and a gasping Ax stumbled into the study.
‘Axius, what’s this?’ Julia said, affronted.
‘It’s the boy,’ Ax wheezed. Julia’s eyes darted to Loren, but Ax grunted, ‘The other one. And Clovia. You better come quick.’
Sprawled like a discarded doll, Clovia lay in the atrium, face submerged in the plunging pool. Her head bobbed in the water, loose hair writhing in ropy strands.
Felix was kneeling beside her.
Loren’s throat seized.
Julia inhaled sharply, and Felix’s head jerked up. Loren took stock of his face, searching for a clue to prove he couldn’t have done this, but his expression gave away nothing. Only the tight line of Felix’s mouth exposed him affected at all.
The dreams of a Felix let loose on the city. Was this how the end began?
‘Augustus!’ Julia shouted as Ax crumpled.
Gus lumbered in, blinking away sleep. When his slow brain caught up with the scene, he grunted, reaching for a weapon. Aurelia’s father’s sword had hung from his belt last night. Not anymore. Undeterred, he lunged for Felix and wrestled him from Clovia’s body.
Felix didn’t struggle. Just stared at Julia with hard eyes.
‘I thought it strange,’ she said, meeting Felix’s gaze, ‘when she didn’t arrive to dress me this morning. I dismissed it. Perhaps she was tired.’
‘We were drinking,’ murmured Ax. ‘Last night.’
‘Tripped, did she? Interesting she landed face down in the pool with no one to help her. I believe, Axius, I instructed you to stay off the wine.’
Ax scrubbed a palm across his forehead, smearing nervous sweat.
‘Interesting,’ Julia continued, nostrils flaring, ‘that she seemed sober enough when she brought me parchment before bed. Are my guards so lax that not even my staff is safe in my own house? She’s lain here for hours, and the street boy found her first. Disturbing.’
Ax swallowed.
‘It hasn’t been hours,’ Felix corrected. ‘And she didn’t drink herself to death. Or drown.’
Julia’s expression didn’t stray from cold impasse. ‘You know this how?’
‘She wasn’t here when I left earlier. Feel her. Her blood is warm. This happened moments ago.’
When nobody moved to prove him wrong, Felix squirmed free to pull Clovia from the water. Rivulets streamed down her pale face. ‘Poppy sap. Can’t you smell it?’
‘I can’t smell a thing.’
