Geralt manages nit to choke in his liquor when Nina says it. He doesn't ask if it's a joke. Nina wasn't in the habit of playing pranks, and even if she were, there would be something in her manner that would lead him toward the truth, whether it was a change in the way she smelled or the twitch of her eyes in an untruth.

So Nina was pregnant. That was the truth.

There was no point in asking how. They both had to know; there was only one way it could have happened. When Geralt was without mutations, from a wish he'd never recalled making, on a star that shouldn't have had any power to grant it.

"Give me a minute," Geralt murmured. There were too many emotions running through his mind and heart at once, some of them at odds with each other, and Geralt at a disadvantage. They had no easy way to crystallize themselves, poor practice in expression.

But he steadily met Nina's eyes, and gave her a sweet-tempered and ephemeral smile.