Prologue: Italy, 1932

Statues watched as Van descended into what was left of the Temple of Venus.

June warmth had settled over the Gulf of Naples, sticky enough to raise beads of sweat against the back of Van’s neck, but down here, the air was cool and still. Trapped almost. His boots crunched against the stone floors, dust stirring as he lit the oil in his lamp.

Behind him, Atlas fumbled down the last few steps with his eye pressed against his camera. “The papers are going to love this.”

The camera flashed, and Van blinked. It was a newfangled thing, all black and chrome with a pop-up bulb. Atlas carted it around everywhere, snapping photographs of the excavation’s progress. Atlas Exploration Company couldn’t exist without the deep pockets of Atlas’s family, founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Ancient Art, and those deep pockets required proof that their prodigal son wasn’t merely gallivanting around Italy.

In the dark of the temple, the echo of the flashbulb stained Van’s vision. The wrinkle between his brows dug itself deeper. Terse, he said, “Watch it.”

“Relax, pal,” Atlas said with an echoing laugh. “It’s not like it’s booby trapped.”

It wasn’t anymore. Because Van had disarmed all the traps the first time he followed the hidden staircase leading him deep beneath the earth.

“And we need a picture to go underneath the headline.”

Van snorted. “What headline?”

“ ‘Young Scholars Resurrect the Lost City of Pompeii,’ ” Atlas said in his best broadcaster voice.

“More like ‘Van Keane Discovers the Treasure of the Vase of Venus Aurelia.’ ”

“Where’s my name in that headline? You wouldn’t be here without me.”

With his white-blond hair greased, his collared shirt neatly pressed, and that Zeiss camera strapped around his neck, Atlas was better at funding and documenting excavations than he was at participating in them.

Van ignored him and trekked deeper into the temple, following the chipped tiles where they led to a marble altar, flanked by stone sentries. Five legionaries had been carved from white marble, etched with dark veins. They each perched on engraved pedestals that bore a Latin inscription. Instead of a gladius, bows strapped across their backs with full quivers of stone arrows. Venus’s guardians.

Atlas circled the guardians, weaving between their pedestals. “Aqua, Ignis,Terra, Aura, and Mors.”

One for each of the elements, and a fifth: death. Where the rest were depicted as broad-shouldered soldiers in greaves and paludamenta, the statue of death’sskeletal frame had been pierced through the chest with a carved arrow, right into a heart bleeding red.

Somehow, it watched Van, just a skull with empty eye sockets. As if it could sense the shard in his pocket, that the treasure it had been sculpted to protect had returned home.

“The only one left standing in our way,” Atlas said as he placed his hand on Mors’s bony shoulder. Our way, Van balked. “I wonder what his trial will be.”

Does he know what I have done? Van could still feel the cobwebs clinging to his skin. Couldn’t shake the catacomb cold from his limbs.

But then a wide, naive smile crept onto Atlas’s face. “What are you waiting for?”

Van hovered over the altar. Three black porcelain shards had been arranged so that their jagged edges aligned. They’d fit together like puzzle pieces. Two more and the Vase of Venus Aurelia would be whole again.

“Drat. The shard. It’s with my journal,” Van said, rolling out his shoulders in agitation. He pressed a finger to his temple. Forgetful. Believable. “I forgot it back at camp.”

Atlas squinted. “That’s unlike you.”

“Is it?”

“You barely take your nose out of that diary of yours.” Another one of his piercing laughs cuts Van right to the marrow.

“It’s not a—”

Atlas clasped a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll grab it. Left side under your pillow, right?”

Van frowned. “That’s supposed to be a secret.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Atlas was already running toward the entry staircase. “I thought we didn’t keep secrets.”

He was the closest thing Van had to a best friend, a brother.

“Don’t do anything until I get back, okay?” Atlas called back. “Promise me.”

“Promise,” Van yelled after his receding footsteps.

And then he waited, still until the temple door slammed. His palms slicked with sweat. Could he really do this?

Steadying himself, he withdrew the fourth shard from his pocket. And then a fifth.

Gold danced across the surface of the Vase’s pieces. Delicate brushstrokes depicting myrtle blooms and rolling waves were woven together by a string of Latin that could only be read when all five shards were reunited. If Van had been able to understand Latin at all.

Flat on the altar, he pressed the seams of two pieces together.

Aureus, amor aeternus et cor—

As soon as the last shard was fitted into place, the Vase burned Van’s fingertips. Hot. He staggered backward as the pottery began to float, light emanating from each shard. Gold dripped in the seams, fusing the shards back together.

Then, it stopped. The light dimmed. Van batted away the sudden darkness like he did after one of Atlas’s poorly timed photo ops.

This was it.

Before he could step to the Vase, it shattered. Five shards clattered against the stone altar, but they didn’t break. Van reached for them, and a shout died in his throat. Where his fingertips should have brushed porcelain, there was nothing. The shards had vanished.

They couldn’t have vanished. That was absurd. The Vase of Venus Aurelia was myth, not magic. The key to a hidden treasure: vast piles of gold, undying fame, a way to finally be someone.

They’d fallen under the altar. That must have been it. There was always a logical explanation.

He moved to take a step, but his foot turned heavy. Stuck. Van strained, stretched. It did nothing. He couldn’t move. He glanced down at his boot as the leather paled, faded, warm brown sapping to cool white. And like twining ivy, it climbed. Marble spread from his fingertips up his forearms, over his shoulders, down his chest.

Van struggled, fighting a scream for no one, until the very moment his heart turned to stone.

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