Chapter 1

Margot loved nothing more than a good story. A call to action that couldn’t be resisted and a sweeping adventure, a big reveal and a grand gesture. A kiss at the end, obviously. Windswept and sunlit and lipstick stained. The kind that made a girl believe in happily ever afters.

As she strode the paved streets of Pompeii, Margot flipped through a leather-bound journal, soaking up each slanted line like it was a New York Times bestseller. The pages had warped and wrinkled, yellowed at the edges from the last century. Dirt smudged over sharp-edged penmanship. At the front, written in heavy letters, ink pen dripping, it read: Property of Van Keane.

Each entry was dated back to the summer of 1932, starting on a June day not unlike this one. Van was only eighteen, but his team included some of the first archaeologists to dig their shovels into Pompeii’s sunbaked earth. She paused toward the journal’s middle, where the scribbled entries abruptly stopped. Nestled between the pages was a photo.

There were others, of course. Black-and-white snapshots capturing first glimpses of Pompeii as he dredged the city up—but this was her favorite. Van’s hair was light, cropped on the bottom but longer on top, somehow both coiffed and careless. He had been sculpted in harsh lines and sharp relief. His mouth was pressed tight, eyebrows cinched. Hunky. Brooding. Totally her type.

It was the last photo of Van ever taken. He didn’t know it back then, but later that night, while he scraped back the centuries by the light of an oil lamp, the ground would shake, shift. Unstable, the dig site collapsed. He’d gone too deep when the ceiling caved, crushed beneath the rubble with no chance at escape. It wasn’t just Pompeians buried here. Somewhere below the earth were his bones, too.

He died making history.

In his last entry, he’d written, Out here, there are only elements—sun, earth, a freesia breeze, and a sea so sparkling it isn’t hard to believe Venus herself rose from the foam and chose this land as her own.

Margot lifted her head to survey the city, letting the salt air thread through her chin-length curls. On a good day, they were unruly, but Italy’s June-warm humidity had turned them outright unmanageable. She kept them out of her face with a satin scarf tied behind her ears. In this century, everything smelled like the teetering cypress trees and the oily faux-coconut of Banana Boat sunscreen. Still, Margot might have been walking exactly where Van had, surveying the same land.

Except she should have been watching her step. Too late to do anything but brace for impact, Margot barged straight into a classmate. She rebounded, scuttling backward and losing her footing, and plummeted directly into an ocean of plastic tarps.

Okay, ouch. That was definitely going to bruise. She blinked up at the frescoed ceiling, cherubs flying dizzy circles overhead.

None other than Astrid Ashby peered down at her. Her fair skin didn’t stand a chance this summer beneath the harsh Italian sun, and her stark blonde hair had been pulled into a high pony, letting curtain bangs frame her face. Like the rest of the students at their excavation site, she wore a white T-shirt with Radcliffe Prep Archaeology stamped in the school’s maroon on the breast pocket.

Astrid crossed her arms against her chest and barked, “Watch where you’re going, Rhodes.”

Another face appeared, one with wide-set brown eyes and a permanent wrinkle between her eyebrows. Radcliffe’s head of classical studies was a suntanned white woman with deep brown hair that refused to stay coiled in a chignon at the base of her neck, turning a neat bun into little more than curly tendrils spraying out every direction. Dr. Hunt at least looked concerned for Margot’s safety as she extended a hand. “This is not exactly what I meant when I said we’d get up close and personal with history, Miss Rhodes.”

The entire class watched, snickering, as Margot hoisted herself out of the pit of doom. A whirlpool of embarrassment swam in her chest, a drowning tide. She took a breath and forced a smile. At least, she tried to. But Astrid’s laser-beam glare threatened to disintegrate her at any moment.

“She’s a threat to our whole excavation,” Astrid said. Did she seriously just stomp? They were about to be high school seniors. Nobody stomped anymore. “She shouldn’t be here.”

Dr. Hunt placated Astrid with a tsk. “Every student chosen for this trip had to submit the same assignment. Margot’s earned her spot here as much as anyone else.”

Astrid fumed. “She’s never even taken an archaeology class!”

“Good thing this is a summer class,” Margot said. “For learning.”

“Some of us are taking this seriously.” Astrid tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, haughty. “And at least the rest of us actually followed the essay assignment and didn’t write glorified self-insert fan fiction.”

Margot’s blood pressure rose so high her ears throbbed in time with her pulse. She pressed her fingertips into the soft of her palms until she was certain she’d leave permanent indentations. “Just because you won some dumb award—”

“The Pliny Junior Scholastic Award of Linguistic Achievement in Latin.”

“—doesn’t mean you’re better than everyone!” Frustration swelled, tears welling in Margot’s eyes, but she blinked them back. Exactly the kind of thing everyone expected from her. Too soft. Too emotional. Too loud. Too much.

Astrid grinned, a wicked slice of perfectly straight teeth. The poster child for orthodontia. “Not everyone. Just you.”

When Margot squeezed her eyes shut, she saw Van’s easy smile. God, the things she’d do to have the uninterrupted confidence of a white man. He’d probably just laugh. Astrid’s comments wouldn’t even make a dent in his armor.

Margot wasn’t like that. The snide look on Astrid’s face seared into the folds of her mind, branded her skin like a hot iron. She didn’t know how, in the wise words of Taylor Swift, to shake it off.

She opened her mouth, a tart retort already forming, but before she could say anything else, Dr. Hunt stepped between them with palms spread wide. Every interaction Margot had with her, she had exuded Cool Aunt energy, but right now, her professor was all business. “I’m going to operate under the assumption that it’s the jet lag talking and give you two a chance to work this out. Rhodes, Ashby, you’re partners for the summer.” She turned to the other eight students selected for the summer abroad and added, “The rest of you, pair up. Rule number one, always use the buddy system.”

A murmur coursed through the students, but Dr. Hunt fixed Margot with a stare.

“Put the notebook away for now,” she said, lowering her voice, “and try not to destroy a UNESCO World Heritage site on the first day of our dig.”

Margot nodded. It wasn’t like she could argue around the lump in her throat.

In the last six years, Margot had tried on countless versions of herself. Ballet, watercolor painting, musical theater, six months of violin lessons—like a Barbie playing dress-up. Nothing ever stuck. And Astrid was right about one thing. As the class paired off, Margot recognized most of them from passing glances across campus and evenings spent organizing the school yearbook, but not from class. Because Margot had never stepped foot in an archaeology classroom.

She’d only decided to take a real stab at archaeology a few weeks ago after finding a flyer for Dr. Hunt’s trip posted on the library’s bulletin board. Six weeks in the south of Italy, soaking up the sun, discovering ancient artifacts, solving millennia-old mysteries. Plus, helloooo, Italian boys.

Three nights in a row, she curled over her laptop with an IV drip of caffeine, hammering away page after page on her application essay. A few hundred Google wormholes later, she’d basically taken a crash course on Roman antiquity. She triple-checked her margins, double-spaced it, and slid her essay into Dr. Hunt’s office with only an hour to spare.

But these students, they all knew each other, needling elbows into each other’s sides and cracking jokes that went way over her head.

Astrid grabbed the only other girl on their trip by the arm. “Suki, partner with me.”

Suki Takeda was tall and slim with light brown skin, and she fiddled absentmindedly with the ends of her deep brown braids. She’d wasted no time taking a pair of scissors to her class T-shirt, and instead of the brown boots everyone else wore, Suki opted for a chunky pair of Doc Martens. “Nice try. I’m working with Rex.”

“He looks a little . . . preoccupied,” Margot said. She pointed over Suki’s shoulder, where Rex Yang sparred against Topher Kitsch, a Black boy with box braids, using shovels like gladiator swords.

Suki put two fingers in her mouth and whistled so loudly a bird crowed, fleeing the branches above them. Rex and Topher snapped to attention. Running over, they flanked Suki on either side. “Rex,” she said, “you’re with me.”

Rex raised his eyebrows so high they disappeared beneath the harsh line of his black hair. Mostly limbs and sinewy muscle, Rex moved with easy grace Margot knew had to be from hours upon hours of cheerleading practice. He smiled. Easy, confident. “If you say so. Sorry, Toph, you’re on your own.”

Astrid, evidently desperate to escape Margot like she was Typhoid Mary, pivoted. She raised her eyebrows at Topher in a silent plea.

Topher raised his open palms and said, “No way. I’m going to see if Calvin still needs a partner.” Then, as if realizing Margot was literally standing right there, added, “No offense, Margot, but you’re not . . .”

“Archaeologist material?” Astrid offered. There was a lilt to her voice, mean-girl playful. “Who wears red lipstick to a dig site anyway?”

Astrid linked arms with Suki, and the boys trailed after them. Every remark died on Margot’s tongue.

So, what? She wasn’t the daughter of some bigwig west coast museum curator like Suki, and she didn’t hail from a long line of archaeologists like Astrid, but what did it matter that Margot grew up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Georgia town, taking etiquette classes with Miss Penelope instead of memorizing the names for each layer of sediment? She wasn’t embarrassed to try something new. And she definitely wasn’t going to be embarrassed about her lipstick. The leading lady always had a calling card—a signature scent or a beauty mark. For Margot, it was a perfect shade of red lipstick.

Dr. Hunt led them deeper into the excavation site—a shell of stone walls with a labyrinthine floor plan and enough tarp-covered pits that they really should have had school-issued helmets. The first doorway opened into a wide foyer. Cracking frescoes caked the walls. Soft blues faded into pastel pinks. They must have been dazzling jewel tones when they were first painted, but everything lost its color with time.

“This summer, you and your partner will document all of your findings and write a report that touches on the meaning of these discoveries and why it was meaningful at its time of creation.” Dr. Hunt steered the class around a bend, revealing a tent-covered courtyard and five roped off dig plots. Pines jutted out from the harsh soil, hedges encircled fountains that must have once drizzled streams of clear water, and ivy dripped down the walls like gelato on a hot day. “Collect your tools, and let’s get started.”

Margot scooped up two full sets of items—brushes, a picket, a fancy measurement device, some shovel-looking things. Rex and Suki knelt at Plot E, already digging into the hardened earth.

Astrid, on the other hand, sulked at the edge of Plot D. Apparently the D in Plot D stood for Definitely going to lose her freaking mind. Astrid’s eyes were darts, and Margot was the target.

“Here,” Margot said, holding out a second set of tools. “I grabbed some for you.”

“I’m good,” said Astrid.

Suki giggled into the palm of her hand. From a leather pouch, Astrid unsheathed a gilded shovel with a glossy wood handle, burnished with an insignia Margot couldn’t quite make out. Astrid huffed onto the metal and polished it on the sleeve of her shirt.

The extra shovel thudded against the dirt, slipping out of Margot’s fingers.

Astrid asked, her ice-blue eyes narrowed, “Why’d you steal a spot on this trip?”

Margot sagged. “I didn’t steal anything from anyone. You heard Dr. Hunt—”

“Please, Pasha Manikas scored a ninety-nine percent on the Classical Archaeology final last quarter. We were going to be roommates.” Astrid sniffed, puckered like she smelled knock-off perfume. “Your essay shouldn’t have qualified. It was fiction, for god’s sake.”

“Dr. Hunt seems to disagree,” Margot countered, but regret wormed into her stomach, burying itself in her gut.

The students who had been selected for the trip had their application essays posted on the school website.

There had been Suki’s—“Charon’s Obol: An Investigation of the Roman Afterlife.”

Astrid had titled hers “Eternal Languages and the People Who Spoke Them.”

Then, way, way at the bottom was Margot’s: “All Rhodes Lead to Rome.”

And maybe it was self-insert fan fiction in the literal definition of the phrase. Margot had written about finding the Vase of Venus Aurelia, pouring in details from Van’s journal. The Vase was Pompeii’s greatest treasure, blessed by Venus herself to grant whoever pieced it back together unimaginable wealth and notoriety, the promise of being loved by all who encountered you. If Margot discovered it, she’d never be dismissed for being too girly, too indecisive, too irrational again—she’d be respected, understood, appreciated. Loved.

The only problem was that, according to legend, Venus shattered the Vase, deeming the power too much for mere mortals. If anyone was able to complete each of her five trials, they would be rewarded with a piece of the Vase. But that was the hiccup. It was just a myth.

There was no road map. No flashing arrow saying Trial of Venus, due north! No one had ever seen all five pieces. No one until Van.

“You’re never going to find that stupid Vase,” Astrid snapped. “People have been looking for it for the last two thousand years.”

Margot shrugged, batting her lashes. “Maybe they just didn’t know where to look.”

“But you do? You don’t know a trowel from a spade.” Astrid laughed, cutting. “Forget it. I’m not letting you ruin my GPA because you think you’re Lara Croft.”

Margot held on to Van’s journal like a buoy in a raging sea. Her heart slammed against her rib cage, emotion bubbling back up. Her dad always said she felt things too much. That she thought with her heart instead of her head. It wasn’t her fault that her heart had a megaphone and her head had anxiety.

Before she could scream or cry or both, Margot bolted out of the tent and scaled the short stone wall, landing in an alleyway. The distant din of Astrid’s laugh trailed after her, but Mount Vesuvius loomed in the distance. On a day like today, the skies blue and a gentle wind lifting Margot’s hair off her neck, it was hard to imagine the mountain demolishing an entire civilization under ash and dirt. For centuries, this town, these roads, had been buried. Abandoned and forgotten.

Now, cobbled streets and colonnades had been pried from the earth’s grip and exposed once again. Margot could almost imagine the faded ink lines of elevation maps the original explorers must have charted when they first arrived, like all the places Van had touched turned golden in the afternoon light.

Margot slid onto her butt, curling her knees to her chest, and wormed her arms out of the straps of her backpack. She pried open Van’s journal and it fell back to the last entry. The spine had probably creased, she’d flipped to this page so many times. Her index finger trailed over his penmanship, feeling the grooves where his pen indented the paper.

Sitting here, she could almost imagine him next to her. His tawny hair, his knife-sharp jaw, the way his linen shirt stretched across his broad shoulders. The heroes in romance novels always smelled like sandalwood, and he probably did, too. Like sandalwood and salt, a trace of evergreen—that intangible scent of a day spent outside.

He’d searched for the Vase even though no one else believed it could exist. Like believing in soulmates or the Loch Ness Monster—both things Margot was happy to trust were out there somewhere. He would have understood Margot. She was sure of it.

Unzipping her mustard-yellow backpack, she dropped Van’s notebook into its depths, right between a beaten-up paperback novel and a wad of linen she miraculously snuck through airport security. She didn’t dare breathe as she unwrapped the artifact.

Red clay, painted black. Streaks of gold wove across the exterior, myrtle blooms and a fragment of Latin painted at the edge, the last word broken off. A piece of something spectacular, like glass before the mosaic.

A shard of the Vase of Venus Aurelia.