The name Loren hadn’t heard in four years. Not since his father last drawled it.
‘You knew,’ Loren said. ‘This entire time.’
‘Of course I knew,’ Julia hissed, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘I grew up in trade. You thought I wouldn’t have met your father? I wouldn’t recognise your mother in you? That I’d pluck any random temple boy off the street? I want to solidify my family line, not destroy it.’
If Loren’s carefully constructed false identity hadn’t just been wrenched apart at the seams, he might have laughed. How could he have missed it? The wine jug in her study, how she hadn’t questioned his lacking backstory – of course she knew.
She had never wanted him. Just his name.
Loren stood, nearly overturning his chair. The cord around his neck hung heavy.
‘I’m not your doll,’ he bit through clenched teeth, ‘to manipulate. Find someone else, Julia.’
He stormed out. Behind, Felix’s footsteps were close on his heels, but whatever he had to say, Loren couldn’t stomach it. He burst into the Forum, where the party still thrived, infectious, careless joy. A jolt shot through his veins. Sitting in the study, surrounded by maps and money, it had been so easy to forget that this was Pompeii’s beating heart.
This was his home. He’d struggled here, cried here, true, but Pompeii had been the first to offer him any chance at existing on his own terms, outside his father’s villa. Pompeii gave him hope.
Ghost-Felix’s words rang back:You did this to yourself.
Aurelia’s next:You can’t stop the fire.
His uselessness tore him apart.
Loren loved this city the way Icarus loved the sun. Bold. Bright. Willing to burn for it.
‘You’re all in danger,’ he breathed.
Felix crept up quietly. Gentle fingers curled around Loren’s wrist, a rare touch that emboldened him to act.
‘Damn it all.’ Loren pulled away and strode forward.
Government buildings and temples surrounded the Forum on all sides, stuffy halls of law and order, but the point of the place was to open the floor to the common man. Any free citizen could speak, and even if Loren had objections to who that list excluded, by the gods, he’d use this platform for all it was worth.
Because Julia wouldn’t do anything about Servius.
Because Loren could do something.
He hitched the hem of his toga and clambered onto the nearest stone block.
‘Stop, everyone, stop!’ he shouted. ‘You must listen!’
A group nearby shot Loren dirty looks, but the crowd danced on. It was too loud. Thinking fast, he pulled off one sandal.Apollo help him. He threw it.
He’d aimed between the flautist and the drummer, only to get their attention, but his shot was off, and the shoe smacked the kitharist square in the face. The boy stumbled back, music grinding to a halt. The dancing slowed. Heads turned. Sudden, stunned silence.
Loren stared, hand over his mouth. But he’d got what he wanted. He pulled his palm away, and said, loud and shaky, ‘You’ll all die if you don’t leave the city. Now.’
A thousand pairs of eyes fell on him. Well, if his political career hadn’t already withered, it had surely crumpled now. He pressed on.
‘It sounds absurd.’ A few people in the crowd shifted, shot each other apprehensive glances. Encouraged by the possible stirring of belief, Loren raised his voice to carry across the square, despite his panic. ‘But a horrible catastrophe is about to fall upon the city. The quakes are no coincidence. They’re a warning. Days, weeks, I don’t know when. You must leave. Immediately.’
‘What evidence?’ a man shouted back.
Loren paled. What evidence indeed. His parents had urged him from childhood, ever since he first dreamed of a woman from town drowning, only for her bloated body to wash up days later, to keep his visions secret. They were an embarrassment, a defect, a sure sign he was mad or cursed or both. His father once said,There is no tolerance for madness, boy. Not here, not out there.
Across the Forum, Loren locked eyes with Julia, haloed against the open door of the lantern-lit study. She was all marble and glowing gold, cold and furious as a distant star. Strange, friendless Julia. In the end, he supposed they weren’t so different.
Two people dripping with privilege, but neither had power when it mattered.
