I was still trying to locate myself after I crossed the portal, feeling way more drained than I did before, as crossing portals take a tool on people who ain't used to it, and I ain't; when I turned around and found a groups of twenty people, all looking very quite similar to each other and to Grégórí, just four of them not looking that alike at all, which means they are the foreigners part of the Nguyen Russo. Their eyes all widened when they saw me, and I felt small in front of their towering height, but I kept it confident and my chin up.
"Mor...Mortimer," an older female gasped and fainted.
"Are you the clan who's been pestering me for 110 years?" I asked coldly.
"Oh, shit," the older male who was holding the fainted female, fainted.
Well, this is getting weirder, "I guess that's a yes," I scoffed.
The younger and unphantomably pretty female in the middle, all dressed in fancy yellow clothes that look perfect in her sun-kissed skin, that's definitely their color, she looks radiant in it, "Are you Kore Ann Mortimer?" She asked.
I tilted my head, "The Emperor killed my entire clan, so, I doubt there's any one else with eyes as red as mine," I joked and they gasped. "Yes, it's me."
"You… you finally accepted our offer," she chanted, a grin appearing.
She looks like a maniac, period. "I needed the money, sunny boy made a great bargain with me, and he swore on the Styx, just as I swore on the Styx that I will be agreeable and take part on this as long as he keeps his promise. I take that you are sunny boy's mamma, right? What was your name again? Amandí?"
"Ámándá," her grin widened. "How much did my son bargain for?"
I looked around, "25% for me and 75% for you," damn this place's big.
"25%?" I think the gasp came from five of them.
"I could have asked for 50%, but I didn't," I rolled my shoulders, my eyes still wandering all around me. "This place is nice, smells like vanilla and cloves."
"25% sounds amazing, anything to have you here," Ámándá beamed. "It is a great honor to have the sole heiress of the Mortimer with us. You can call me Nándá, it's nicer than my full first name."
"I'm the survivor of the Mortimer, not the heiress, there was nothing left for me to inherit after the Great houses of Crims'On stole all of my inheritance in the meantime I was going through my family's symbolic funeral, since there was nothing left behind to bury or cremate," I turned my eyes back to her, who looked considerably uncomfortable. "Sunny boy said I could come already."
"You're… excited to be here?" A female even younger than Ámándá was the one to say this, and by how she looks nearly identical to a female version of Grégórí, I think she might be one of his two younger sisters, Ámélí or Ádélé.
"You are?" I arched my brows at her.
"I'm Ámélí Nguyen Russo," as if I didn't know her surname.
"Well, no, Ámélí, I am not excited. I just didn't want to stay in Justine's loft, which I had been renting a room in for a while, because she and sunny boy just mated and they are fucking like rabbits in their mating frenzy, and it's disgusting. I have nowhere else to go, so, asked him if I could come already, sunny boy said the other girls will be here only in October 8th, but that I could come. So, I'm here," I rolled my shoulders. "You were just lucky to come to me when I had no better choice rather than accept this absurd idea, and I'm hating it all, to be clear."
Another female, slightly shorter than her but identical to her, who I take to be Ádélé, asked, "What did my brother tell you?"
A lot of things he apparently shouldn't, "Nearly nothing past the bargain."
"Can you answer some questions that we need to know to pass to the males who will be bidding for you in the auction, as you will be our 10th Lady and the diamond of the auction?" Ámándá came closer, a pen in a hand with notebook in the other, looking quite obnoxious.
"Whatever," I put my hands on the front pockets of my worned out pants.
"Are you a virgin?" She asked, and they all seemed curious about that.
"Yes," I answered bored.
"When were you born exactly?" She tilted her long dark brown curly hair.
"December 6th of 9571, I'll turn 126 in some months."
But she didn't seem satisfied, "Is there something more specific about it?"
"About the moment you were born," Ámélí added.
"If you want something more precise than that, I was born at 3:36 in the morning of a Friday, it was a dark night in Crims'On and I was born during a unique phenomenon that happened once every 10 thousand years, called the Blood Star Fall, the night is dark and there's a starlight rain but all of them are as red as blood, and it's a sign of a direct blessing of the Goddess Hecate. During the Blood Star Fall, the veil of magic gets thinner for 66 minutes and 6 seconds, and all the life that's born within that time is blessed with great magic, and I was the only one born in the last Blood Star Fall, when it was at it's 33 minutes and 3 of duration, right in the core middle of it when the veil is the most sensible and magic overflows over Crims'On like a tsunami. No kid had been born during it in the last one million years, and the legend say that those born in it are kissed by Hecate."
By the time I ended the annoying fact I hate to even think about, the couple I believe to be Ámándá's parents were up again, and staring at me in sheer shock, as if they still were struggling to believe I'm actually here.