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It was Lucia's fault. No one was going to say it was Lucia's fault, but it was.
She dared him. Mother would say he was too old to fall for dares, even though she knew just how to say them so he'd agree. There were those great big walls around the city, and really, who puts walls there if you're not supposed to climb them? And Lucia said she'd got that soft fall spell working. Which she had; when he fell off the wall, it didn't hurt.
It just dropped him right on top of a demon.
Susanna pats her little brother's head, because he's being very cute and she's had the Hells of a day.
Lucia's half-suppressed impatience is obvious, but she doesn't interrupt anyone, and she eats dutifully.
"What happened to you two, anyway?" she asks.
"Nothing very much; Pietro fell into one of the rifts and I jumped in after him with a soft-fall spell. What about you?"
"...we passed out and we're not sure why. On our way to the city walls, to... to climb them, for a stupid dare. Then we woke up, and my chest was hurt, and a guard found us, and... he was a demon in disguise, we think, but he gave me a magic arrow, and... I threw it into the big demon's eye. Somehow. Then everything collapsed. And we found Mrs. Tirabade."
Breathe.
"And Lucia said I was a demon, in her fiend-sight."
Anevia gives him an appraising look. "That's why you could get that rock off me?"
"Lucia, I think you didn't get the spell right. I cast it when we saw you, and neither of you registered."
"But –"
Lucia casts again.
"...it changed. But he was so bright. I couldn't even think around it."
"I don't know the spell to fail that way, but it seems likelier than Emilio being a demon for five minutes."
"But I'm stronger now than I should be."
He lifts a sizable rock for emphasis, one-handed, as he eats more lizard.
"Which is strange, but you being a demonic replacement that suddenly stopped detecting as one wouldn't make it less strange."
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