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“Well, what do ya know?”

There was a long pause.We know only myths and legends. Her female ancestors died protecting her lineage. Her blood is colored with gold, and we have seen it often. We cannot enlighten you further. You already know more than we know.

I picked up the staff and glared at it the way Mulan often did. “How could I possibly know more about the Wu Shaman than the three of ya?”

You draw her people to you. Mulan has become something greater than the human females who bore the offspring so long ago. Their sires named them something different from themselves to make it easier to destroy them. But not all were evil. Not all needed to be destroyed. We are glad we were not alive then.

My throat went dry. Afraid to give voice to what they were implying, I switched to thinking rather than speaking.Are ya saying that Mulan is descended from nephilim who escaped being killed by their watcher fathers?But they were allegedly giants, and Mulan is so definitely not a giant. What ya’re saying is hard to believe.

Mulan’s weary-sounding staff cleared her throat before answering me. How could someone dead sound so tired of life? When I talked face-to-face with One of The Three, the stone’s dead mage hadn’t seemed to feel anything beyond irritation at me being there when I shouldn’t have been.

Nephilim blood has thinned over the millennia, but their descendants—the few who survived to procreate—still carry divinity and wield great power. The gift of their fathers lives on in their DNA. Her birth parents were for sure Chinese, but one or both of them had nephilim magick in their blood. This is the logical answer. We cannot confirm our theory.

Nephilim were the product of a male watcher in his natural form pairing with a human female. According to Rasmus, none of the male watchers ever suspected their hybrid children would cause so many problems for the planet. Regret still overshadowed the memories of it for him and his brethren.

Zenos told me the watchers woke him and other dragons from hibernation to help rid the earth of the nephilim offspring. What followed was a long history of struggles between humans and dragons. He cited doing his part for the greater good before promptly returning to his hibernation.

Yet Mulan’s ancestors had somehow survived all efforts to erase their existence. They had continued to live and millennia later created her. And now she had survived to create another nephilim—a partly demon one.

It thrilled me that her parents weren’t her real ones, but the rest of the story was the stuff of nightmares. What kind of creature was their baby going to be? It boggled my mind to think about the possibilities.

Nephilim, the being in the staff whispered to answer my thoughts.It would make the child a demon nephilimand perhaps the first of its kind.

“Good Goddess,” I said, speaking my shock.

What I was thinking was that this sounded like a prophecy coming to pass. Only it wasn’t a prophecy. It was reality—Mulan’s reality.

We did not share the truth with her because the Wu Shaman would have challenged her parents to confirm it. They would have killed her to hide what they did rather than simply give her a tea of forgetfulness. Her shaman status was profitable for them. The money she made paid the bills for all their businesses. They value power above all else. The recovered jiangshi received enough power from you to replace her. This is why they gave up their parental rights to Mulan. They don’t want her interfering with their plans.

“I knew there were good reasons to hate those people.”

She loved them. They were all she knew as parents. It would destroy her even more to learn the whole truth now that they discarded her. There is also the additional concern that your guardians might feel obligated to kill her and her unborn child before she produces an actual child.

“Forget the guardians. They would never try to harm her because they know I would kill them without regret. While I can’t destroy them, I can keep them from regenerating for a very long time. Chopping demons into pieces is my forte. Chopping up a guardian would hurt my soul, but I’d do it before I let Mulan come to harm. She didn’t choose her parents. None of this is Mulan’s fault. She’s an innocent.”

The mages were right about how tough it would be for the Wu Shaman to hear all of what they’d told me. But I whole-heartedly believed they were wrong about it destroying her. I think it would reshape her reality and erase the child guilt her parents had used to control her. More importantly, Mulan had a right to know who and what she truly was.

And I would be here to help her. Conn would be by her side. Together, we would learn the truths of her past and explore what her heritage meant for her future.

“Mulan needs to know, and ya need to tell her. If ya don’t tell her, she’ll feel she can never trust ya. Weigh the consequences of being put in hibernation for the rest of her life against the cost of telling her what ya know. There is only one answer that allows ya to continue working with her. No matter what else she is, she became a Wu Shaman and still takes that role seriously.”

Your words carry wisdom. We will consider your council.

I carried the staff to the bedroom and found Mulan curled into a ball on the bed. I pulled a cozy cover from the bottom and gently draped it over her to keep her warm. Her legs stretched out beneath the cover, but she didn’t wake.

My fierce little friend was completely exhausted. I never saw Mulan look so fragile, and I hoped I never had to see her like this again.

Put us near her. Proximity is best for our magick. We will send enough healing to ease her illness. Your magick help will not be needed with this.

I nodded but didn’t answer as I laid the staff in bed beside her.

If her mages didn’t come clean with her in the next day or so, then I would tell Mulan what they said. I was fairly sure they knew that about me.

But I intended to tell Conn as soon as I could. Because if there was a baby—and I was pretty sure there was—he was most definitely its father.

Goddess only knew what security measures we would need to protect an infant demon royal. We’d at least have to hire a trustworthy nanny. A magical baby daycare had not been part of our grand plan. Since nannies cost a lot of money, we’d have to improve our ability to turn over jobs.

Those were all minor details, though.