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Showing me she meant to keep her word, Mulan lifted the staff in her hand and gazed intently at it. But she wasn’t glaring this time.

I hoped that meant she and her mages were finally talking.

I tookRasmus to the greenhouse. We did our best talking there, and getting back to Mulan would take less than five minutes.

“The mages powering Mulan’s shaman staff said the Wu Shaman’s baby wields nephilim magick. They said it was the baby who helped Mulan stop the fairy from escaping.”

Rasmus rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms. I knew he was remembering our discussion about the watchers and their long-ago mistake.

“That’s a bit shocking but possible. What will your primary concern be if it turns out to be true?”

I lifted both hands palms up. “Mostly, I need to know if Zara or ya have any desire to destroy Mulan’s child because of what it is.”

“Ah...” Rasmus said as if my interest was suddenly crystal clear. “I can’t speak for Zara, but I have none. The nephilim who survived defeated our efforts. They own their fate as much as the rest of us, though I’m sure they hate us still. What we did to their kind exists in myths about us and them. You knew the story before I told you.”

“Yes, that’s true. Should I ask Zara the same question?”

Rasmus nearly laughed. I saw him start to, but then he caught himself. “No, just give Zara a horse. That will keep her too busy to care about anything or anyone else. She is single-minded.”

What Rasmus left unsaid for me to finally figure out was that Zara had known the story all those centuries she’d spent among humans and hadn’t taken it upon herself to track down nephilim descendants.

I sighed and let my body relax. “I would never let ya hurt the baby, Rasmus. I would chop ya into pieces and give them to Orlin to put back together.”

“The child is safe from me and my kind, but Mulan might not be.”

“Why not?”

“The nephilim were never supposed to reproduce. She has worked a modern miracle in her body to have done so.”

I crossed my arms. “Well, yer kind can make yer grand rules all day, every day, but that doesn’t mean humans are going to faithfully follow them. Also, the baby is half demon—and royal demon, at that. What kind of blood would rule in such a person?”

Rasmus lifted a hand in surrender. “I don’t know. What I’m trying to communicate is that the original nephilim were given something to consume that made them sterile. That was the first wave of us trying to rid the earth of them.”

“I guess some of them didn’t drink their sterilization juice like ya thought.”

Rasmus shrugged. “So it would seem. Mothers of following generations must have stayed in seclusion while gestating. Nephilim magick is riotous until the child learns to control it.”

“Do ya think the Mulan can direct his magick?”

“I have no idea. Mulan is good at controlling things. The child is barely a divine spark at this point. He is staying out of sight. If Mulan truly has nephilim blood, her very existence proves our sterilization efforts failed. Geneticists would be fascinated to know how.”

“I can’t talk about geneticists today. It makes me want to kill all of them.” I looked at Rasmus. “I’m calling the baby a ‘he’ as well. Do ya know for sure if it’s a male?”

“No, the spark is still deciding. Perhaps next month, we will see his choice.”

Sometimes Rasmus could be as dense as Conn. Referring to it as‘his’choice seemed a done deal to me that the baby was a boy, but I let it go.

“The shaman staff couldn’t tell the gender but said the child was very powerful. They also said Mulan had been stolen from her biological parents when she was a baby. Their opinion was that her pretend parents disowned her because they no longer needed to capitalize on her magickal talents after she and I regenerated the jiangshi. He became their money-making magickal replacement.”

Rasmus looked at me. “Throughout human history, children have been created and used as commodities. In some parts of the current world, they are still treated that way. It is one of the hardest things to stand by and let humans do. I’ve seen too much.”

I nodded. “So the bottom line is that I will never have to worry about ya hurting Mulan or the baby.”

“No more than I would ever hurt you.”

“Good,” I said. “I need to get back to her. Learning she’s got nephilim blood and has passed it to her child may be the thing that breaks her. I thought she was a goner when Conn fainted.”

“I don’t understand that. Why would the knowledge disturb him if a child with her was what he most wanted?”