Chapter XXIII Felix #2
All these people had one thing in common.
One thing Felix could never have – had never allowed himself to have.
He swallowed thick. A lifetime spent avoiding glances, and now, at the close of his path, he ached to be known.
Just once. Felix kept himself alive by running, sure.
But what was a life if no one would remember him when he’d gone?
The living, the dead, and Felix somewhere between.
The Temple of Apollo stood like an accusation.
Felix never should have touched the helmet.
If he’d taken his coins and cherries and run, he’d be far from here by now.
If he hadn’t crashed into Loren, uprooting his life, Felix wouldn’t be frozen in the Forum while the world went on, while the earth below his feet continued to boil, with the blistering knowledge that nothing he did would ever – could ever – make a difference.
His senses crashed, suddenly too much to handle. Breathing felt like swallowing sand. Felix left, nearly bowling over Darius, who had finally caught up, panting. He lunged, but Felix dodged neatly.
Down the street. Across a block. Up crooked steps.
He paused, hand against the sun-warmed door of the Temple of Isis.
‘This again?’ Darius snapped, palms braced on his knees. ‘A priest’s threats won’t shield you now. Stop running, or I’ll drag your boy back myself.’
Fear gripped Felix, but he composed his face hard as bronze, adopted a tone of pure affront. ‘You would deny me a final visit to my temple?’
‘My master knows what temple you belong to, and it isn’t Isis.’
‘I’m not escaping.’
‘Forgive me for not trusting your word. You’re a snake.’
‘I’m not half so scaly as your master ,’ Felix sneered. ‘What are you, a dog heeling to its owner? He must have something good on you to keep you so loyal.’
‘Bait me with words all you want. You aren’t half as clever as you think.’
‘I don’t think I’m clever at all,’ Felix said. ‘What’s half of nothing? ’
Darius spat. ‘Go on. Pray. See which god helps.’
Felix clenched his jaw and entered.
The courtyard was silent. But not the silence he and Loren shared two nights before, the comfortable quiet of sitting together. When Loren’s hand curled in his. When he first kissed Felix, sloppy drunk and teeth-achingly sweet.
No. This was the quiet before the storm.
Felix took a deep breath and stepped from the portico. Blue smoke curled from the altar into open sky, where it diffused and vanished. Behind the stone block hunched a figure, his gnarled fingers gripping a smouldering bronze bowl. The rest of the courtyard was empty.
‘I wondered when I might see you again,’ said the Priest of Isis at Felix’s approach. His eyes, unlike last time, were clear and keen. ‘Though I am surprised you came willingly. I was under the impression you dislike temples.’
‘Not temples. But I have a history of bad experiences with priests.’ When the old man said nothing in his own defence, Felix continued, ‘Loren left the city.’
The Priest passed a hand through the smoke, and it twisted into peculiar shapes: the soft outline of a galloping horse, the spread of a bird’s wings, a fox disappearing in the underbrush.
A week ago, Felix would have blamed the shapes on whatever alcohol he last drank.
Now all his beliefs – the rules that kept him alive – lay dashed in the gutter.
‘Left? Or was sent away?’
The Priest didn’t say it as an accusation, but it hit as one all the same.
It threw Felix back to the alley, the fear that spiked through him when he saw Loren bidding Aurelia and Livia goodbye.
Felix had counted on Aurelia to convince Loren to leave with them.
His plan hinged on it. But Felix was nothing if not adaptable.
He switched tactics. He baited Loren to follow, then used everything he’d learned about him, admired in him: that Loren acted with his heart .
To get Loren to leave, Felix had to break that heart.
The Priest offered a smile kinder than Felix deserved. ‘Sit with me.’
Reluctantly, Felix perched on a second stool. The still-healing gash on his arm twinged. ‘I hope you aren’t about to take a knife to me again.’
‘The time for appeasing the gods is long past. The course is set, the dice have been thrown, if you will.’
‘Comforting to hear the gods gamble, too.’ Felix sniffed.
The Priest laughed. ‘They have vices, same as humans.’
‘Then why worship them?’ Felix blurted, face flushing hot when the Priest raised a brow. ‘I only mean, it seems unfair to devote so much to them when . . .’
‘When they give little in return? Ah, you’ve stumbled upon the crux of religion,’ he mused. ‘Tell me, how old were you when you lost your mother?’
‘An infant. I never knew her.’
‘And your father?’
Felix tensed. ‘How did you know? That he’s dead?’
‘I can read it in the lines of your shoulders, son, that you have been alone a long time.’
The familiar urge to bolt surged, spreading thin through his blood. Felix made to slip off the stool and – do what, he hadn’t worked out – but the Priest held up a hand.
‘I meant no offence. It can be a terribly good thing to share a burden, you know.’
Felix’s heart pounded, the need to flee driving his bones to move at any cost, but he remembered again . . .
He had nowhere left to run.
Instead, he hugged his midsection tight. ‘I was eleven. My father was a smuggler. A thief, a good one. But that time he wasn’t quick enough. They sliced him to ribbons, right there in the alley. I watched. Everyone watched. Nobody did a damn thing, not the people, not the gods. Not me.’
‘That’s enough to make anyone lose their faith.’
‘I have had only myself since, and even that’s – fragmented. Until I met Loren, and believed in him, and lost him. I wasted the morning running around the city, trying to be on my own again. Now I’m here, but no closer to understanding.’
‘Then perhaps what you need most is faith,’ the Priest said. ‘Not in the gods, but in your ability to let others see you. You might understand yourself along the way.’
Felix wanted that. He wanted like an ache, a muscle atrophied after years of disuse. Boys like him were not allowed to want. Wanting led him to take the helmet. Led him to Loren. Picked at memories long stripped away. Wanting begged for power. Demanded choice.
Felix wanted to want more .
Hot tears blurred his vision. He scrubbed a hand across his damp face with a laugh. ‘You’re a shitty priest. Empathising with a nonbeliever. Is that allowed?’
‘It is not my job to judge you,’ said the Priest quietly. ‘Nor convert you. I only seek to help others find their path, wherever that might lead them. I wouldn’t be so certain your path ends here.’ He waved through the blue smoke and the hazy bird returned. ‘Where did you say Loren went?’
Felix drew in a ragged breath. ‘I sent him away. I said . . . horrible things . . .’
‘You aren’t the first to hurt someone to protect them.’
The Priest met Felix’s stunned stare evenly. The words sank in slowly, stirring the dregs of memories run dry. Felix learned that lesson long ago. Perhaps the final rule his father taught him, that wine-soaked day he killed Mercury’s priest.
To protect Felix, before the rest of their lives fell apart.
‘With any luck,’ Felix said, throat raw, ‘he’ll reach Surrentum before mid-afternoon. He must never return to Pompeii. ’
‘Good. Now, where do you go from here?’
‘I have unfinished business. A debt to settle.’
The Priest’s brow crept higher. ‘We have an exit in the back if you want to try your luck.’
That should have been tempting. But as Felix sat there, the inevitability of his circumstances hardening his stomach, he said, ‘This is where I need to be. I’m tired of running.’
Before the Priest could speak, a low rumble rolled across the sky, thunder with no end. On the altar, the bowl chattered against stone.
‘What . . .’ Felix started.
Another great tremor rocked the ground. With a strangled cry, the Priest lurched, stool knocked unbalanced. Felix lunged to catch him, slinging the old man’s frail arm across his shoulders.
The maddening hum spiked in pitch.
Pain shot through Felix’s skull, an arrow fired clean.
Pressure snapped.
A catastrophic boom ripped the air in two. Some great, ungodly beast had wriggled into the heart of the earth and torn it asunder. Felix’s ears rang empty.
‘The mountain,’ the Priest wheezed. ‘Look to the mountain.’
Felix let the Priest go, then whipped around, darting to the door. Screams and shrieks echoed from beyond, muted by a dull, endless roar. He had no time to brace himself before he stumbled from the temple.
Hot air blasted him, a shock wave of scorching wind. On reflex, he shielded his face, then lowered his arm to squint through the sudden storm. Dust and detritus stirred by the gust scratched his eyes, but when he saw the source of the blast, the sting faded to the background.
The ground still trembled, but the world – its people – had stilled. All staring. All stunned .
Collective, silent horror.
Black tendrils like spilled ink twisted through the sky, curling and climbing up, up. The churning, deadly cloud roared and rose. The once-clear sky dimmed. The beast expanded. Ravenous. Hunting, like only the sun itself could satiate its hunger.
When the first flecks of ash began to fall, Felix almost thought it snow. October snow. He held out a palm, numb, truth not yet sinking in.
Then, all at once, it did.
Vesuvius had burst, and it was swallowing the world.
Felix had thoughts only for Loren, riding away from the city.
He tripped back inside, brain lagging. ‘Tell me he makes it. Don’t – it can’t – please .’
Wordlessly, the Priest steadied himself on the altar, then twisted one hand into the fumes. Nothing at first.
Then it shifted. The bird, and a second shape closing in: a hawk, talons outstretched.