At these words, Iver froze for a moment. "Then... how many wives does Lord Hermes have in total?"
"Of course, there's only me."
Hypatia said indifferently, "I accompanied him from his youth until his complete death. When I first met him, he was about the same age as he is now."
Looking at this little girl, not even tall enough to reach his waist, speaking so seriously about something like this, Iver was rendered speechless for a moment.
He felt a strange sense of dislocation.
It feels like Sherlock's ancestor is asking to be put in handcuffs.
Hypatia shot Iver a glance and said irritably, "I know what you want to ask—the lineage passed down through Sherlock's branch came from the Gray Angel.
"He inherited many of Hermes's powers, including his arts of deception and theft. He could transform himself into any form... whether a man, a woman, an old person, a child, a cow or sheep, an insect or bird, a cloud of mist, a mountain range, or a lake."
"Isn't the Gray Angel your child?"
Iver found it strange that even Hypatia called him the Gray Angel. "Don't you call him by his name directly? And... is he actually male or female?"
Hypatia and Arthur both referred to the Gray Angel as "he," while Lord of Scales and Feathers directly called him "Hermes's son." Iver also clearly remembered that although one of the Gray Angel's forms was a beautiful woman fused with a spider... he was actually male.
Yet Hypatia had previously called the Gray Angel Croesus's identical twin. Iver wasn't sure whether this was because Hypatia's understanding of "identical twins" differed from his own, or whether there was some other reason.
After all, Lily had nearly become the vessel for the Gray Angel's descent. It was only