“Maybe that’s why your mother lost the plot.” Phoebus tightens the threads until the canvas of his hypothesis is so compactly woven no holes remain.
Does Nonna know? The fact that I’m even asking myself this question startles me. How am I so easily accepting that I may have been swapped at birth?
His cheek dimples as he nibbles the inside in thought. “Maybe something was supremely wrong with the real Fallon, so your grandmother stole you from Rax.”
“Except Nonna was just as shocked as you were when she realized I was immune to iron and salt.”
“You’re immune to salt? All our oaths . . .”
“I don’t need salt to uphold my promises, Pheebs. Especially not the ones I make to friends.” A glacial sensation dribbles down my spine, like an icicle melting. “You’re still my friend, right?”
He rolls his eyes, which are pink and puffy. “What sort of inane query is that?”
My heart gives a soft, relieved thump.
“I can’t believe you’re immune to salt. Gods, Syb is going to— Wait. Does she know?”
I shake my head. “No one besides Nonna knows, well, except for Mamma, but I’m not certain it’s registered with her.”
Phoebus stares and stares at my bleeding arm before clicking his mouth and undoing the knot in his scarf collar. He rips off a swath of fabric and wipes down my arm, then coils it tightly to staunch the blood. “Thank the Cauldron I didn’t let you touch the obsidian.”
“It grazed my knuckles.”
What little color he regained seeps out of him anew.
“How fast”—I wet my lips—“does it affect the body?”
“It turns human blood black in minutes.”
He pivots my arm this way and that. Checks between each one of my fingers. “I—” He swallows. “I don’t think . . .”
“That I’m human?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes hold mine for several heartbeats. “Unless . . . Yes, that must be it. It mustn’t be obsidian. It must be ebony or marble.” He shrugs. “They all look alike.”
Do they, though? Isn’t there a difference between stone and wood?
As he tends to me, I set my concerns aside and concentrate on how lucky I am to have a friend like Phoebus.
He tucks the end of the fabric through the makeshift bandage, an indent marring the smooth skin between his pale eyebrows. “Maybe we’re wrong and you’re not human.”
“What could I be then?”
He peeks up at me through his long, pale lashes. “The child of a serpent?”
“The child of a—” I scoff. “You think my mother had sexual relations with a freaking animal?”
“Maybe Agrippina was kinky like that.” A corner of Phoebus’s mouth tugs up.
“Yuck, Pheebs. Yuck.” A vile visual of a serpent humping a human illuminates the backs of my lids. I shudder.
Phoebus snickers. “You should see your face.”
I scowl. “You just implied my mother coupled with a serpent, you cauldron-headed dullard. How exactly did you think I’d react?”
His head falls back with laughter while I shake mine, desperately trying to unsee the image he’s conjured.
In between puffs of hilarity, Phoebus grows a new vine that snakes around the remaining peg. Like last time, he inflates the vine until it discharges the spike. He sobers just enough to say, “An advantage to being half-serpent would be a longer lifespan.”
