I stood still, mesmerized by his eyes, by his touch. “I thought we weren’t doing this anymore,” I said, but I didn’t pull away.

“I did not say that. I said I wanted you to choose. I will use whatever weapon I have to make you choose me.” He smiled, and his smile was so wicked that I almost damned myself then and there just so I could find out what was behind that look.

He pulled his hand away slowly, and I could think again.

“Keep walking,” I said raggedly, and he chuckled beneath his breath.

How could my feelings for one person change so quickly? It wasn’t that long ago that I wanted to kill Nathaniel, and I wouldn’t have shed a single tear if I had. But since we’d joined our powers to create the protective veil over the hospital, it was like I couldn’t stay away from him. What had that spell done to us? In some ways the blending of our magic had felt more intimate than sex, and sex bound people together whether they wanted to be or not. Or…

I looked at Nathaniel through the corners of my eyes. He seemed calm and self-contained, as usual. Could he have cast a spell on me while we were joined? Could I be drawn to him now because of something artificial he’d planted inside me?

But you saw inside his heart, a little voice in my head argued.

That doesn’t mean anything, I argued back. He’s thousands of years old, and much more practiced in duplicity than you are.

But his duplicity is a front. He’s just playing the game that Lucifer taught him.

But what if that whole story was just another manipulation to make me believe in him? I was giving myself a headache trying to see all of the angles.

And then there was the matter of his changeability, his moral fluidity. I never could get a fix on Nathaniel from the start. It always seemed that he was adjusting to the situation, that he would be whatever he thought he should be at the moment. Just like a…

I looked at him more sharply now, realizing who it was he’d reminded me of as he stood over Focalor’s soldier in the moonlight.

Puck.

“Nathaniel, who did you say your father was?” I asked, like I couldn’t remember, like he hadn’t just told me his whole family history.

“Zerachiel of the Grigori,” Nathaniel said. “But I thought you said you did not care for politics.”

“Are you certain he’s your father?” I persisted.

“Have you not seen him at the court? I am the mirror image of my father,” Nathaniel said with a touch of irritation.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No. Why the abrupt interest in my family?” he asked.

“Just curious,” I said, my eyes searching his face for confirmation of my suspicions.

I couldn’t tell him what I thought without proof. There was one more thing I needed to ask, though.

“Does Zerachiel have children among the nephilim?” I asked.

“No,” he said, and there was a real haughtiness to his voice, almost like the old Nathaniel. “My father alone was able to exercise self-restraint in the face of his lust. He knew it was not natural for angels to procreate with human women. It was one of the things Cassiel loved about him. She hated the nephilim children of the other Grigori.”

“I don’t think so,” I muttered, deciding now wasn’t the time to be offended on behalf of human women.

From what I knew of angels, they would take any opportunity to spread their seed far and wide, and they had no trouble doing so. Azazel had at least two other children besides me—Antares and an unnamed nephilim. He may have had more.

On the heels of that disconcerting thought came the further disconcerting thought that another half sibling might show up on my doorstep and try to kill me.

Stay focused. No need to borrow trouble.

Lucifer had more children than he could count, especially since it seemed he’d screw anything that stood still long enough. Heck, even Gabriel had gotten me pregnant on the first try.

What were the chances that Zerachiel had managed to make only one child in thousands of years?

Pretty damn slim, I thought.

It was Titania and Oberon all over again. Puck had come to Titania in the guise of Oberon to preserve the myth that she was not cuckolding her husband. But genes had a tendency to tell. Titania’s son, Bendith, had Puck’s brilliant blue eyes. There could be no doubt who Bendith’s father was, no matter what Titania and Oberon said.

Puck could have come to Nathaniel’s mother in the guise of Zerachiel, as he had done to Titania in the form of Oberon. Somehow he’d manipulated the conception so thoroughly that not a trace of Puck’s physical traits had shown up in Nathaniel. But his true nature was still there, underneath the skin, waiting to be unlocked.

Could Nathaniel really be Puck’s child? If he was, then Puck had done a good job of not betraying the relationship in Titania’s court. He’d acted like he was meeting Nathaniel for the first time.

Of course, if Lucifer found out—or even suspected—that Puck had a child inside Lucifer’s organization, then Nathaniel’s life wouldn’t be worth squat.

Maybe all of this was in my head, anyway. I had no proof of my suspicions, and nothing to go on except Nathaniel’s expression in the moonlight.

But maybe, just maybe, that was why Nathaniel’s mother had been killed. Maybe she hadn’t been plotting against Lucifer, but had simply borne a child that had not been her husband’s. There were plenty of examples in human history of queens whose lives had been forfeit because they had betrayed their kings. The sanctity of the bloodline must always be preserved. That was treason enough if Lucifer was looking for a reason to take revenge on Cassiel.