Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Nathaniel leaned against the wall, checking his watch. It was twenty minutes until the fourth night of the auction began, and he knew the boys had been wearing black wristbands, which meant they would likely be there. Assuming they entered the same way as last time, that meant they'd be passing through the hall near him on the way to their pulpit.

His lips curled down as he thought about the pulpit they entered. The Leosvar family was one of the few families that could contest the Thorntons, and three of the five most powerful mages of Earth alive were of their blood.

However, he had to confirm what his servant had commented about the night before, which was why he was there, waiting for them.

Another two minutes passed, and he was finally granted the sight of the three boys. One who looked around twelve, he wrote off immediately. He was the Leosvar, based on him having the Leosvar Crest, which he presented to the servant outside their pulpit before entering.

It was the other two that Nathaniel had wanted to see. According to the vampire, the one with more regular blond hair and the brown eyes was very powerful, more so than most youth. However, he smelled human on all levels. Nathaniel didn't detect anything special about his looks, and wrote it off as a special case, a rare prodigy.

The other boy, the platinum-blond, however, Nathaniel recognized immediately. That was the one the servant had expressed great interest in, claiming his magic rivaled anyone the vampire had ever met before.

That's not what caught Nathaniel's attention, however. He couldn't detect the boy's magic at all, as he didn't have a sense for it. The boy had their hair and eyes, and while it could have been coincidence, he could see his own features in the boy's face.

The boy was a Thornton through and through. Only one Thornton had been born who wasn't in their estate or living the rest of their miserable life as a Fairy Tree. Nathaniel's daughter had been raped, and when she turned out pregnant, they did tests on her.

The child had almost no magic and absolutely no divinity or angelic aura. They forced her into a choice: give him up, or leave the family and be cut-off from everything. She convinced them into letting her give birth and put him up for adoption.

The only explanation for the boy having so much magic would be if the father was a god. Demigods had very little magic until they reached puberty, which started for them around five to seven years of age and went until they were between thirteen and fifteen, their growth spurts starting in the second half. Around three years into puberty, their magic would awaken naturally as well.

They were one of the few types of beings whose magic awoke so naturally.

Nathaniel frowned further at that thought. If the boy had read as human when he was only a month into formation, then his godly parent had bound his divinity at conception, no doubt. Only gods of fertility, life, or sex could tell for sure if the pregnancy would happen immediately. Only they could do such a thing.

It made no sense to him, a god binding his son's divinity at conception. Not unless it was one particular god of sex, fertility, and life. Or, more accurately, one particular High God, who was known for doing that, leaving them bound until they were of the age of majority for their birth world.

It seemed they'd made a mistake, giving the boy up. The adoptive parents had died within a couple of years, which he knew should have been a sign that the boy had divinity that was bound up, but he didn't think much of it.

At least the adoptive parents had let them name the kid. It would be easy for him to track down where the boy was and see about paying off whoever had custody of him to turn it back over to the family without a fight.

A few more minutes passed, and Nathaniel felt a familiar presence standing beside him. Looking over, he was met with the amused gaze of Alexander Leosvar.

"It isn't like you to lurk, Nathaniel," Alex said.

"It isn't like you to directly talk to me," Nathaniel shot back, then turned and walked towards his own pulpit.

Alex watched him, his smile widening. He enjoyed pissing off the other demigod at every opportunity, and had seen him take up the spot on the wall. Not for the first time, he wondered if Nathaniel knew that he wasn't the only demigod who could conceal their divinity.

Or that Alex was his uncle.

Making his way to his own pulpit, he showed his crest to the servant before entering and taking his seat behind the boys, who were talking about the Thorntons.

"I take it you noticed Nathaniel standing out there, then?" Alex asked.

"Yeah," Adam looked behind to his grandfather. "I'm sure you've already noticed that Cameron's one. We'd been hoping to hide it for as long as possible, so that we could get Cam trained up enough to defend himself well."

"Nathaniel will be looking for him," Alex said.

"He'll find my town fast enough," Cameron said. "But he'll have to search for me hard once finding out I'm in Tejina. I'm not in anyone's custody."

"I'd rather you avoid war with the Thorntons," Alex told Adam. "They will raise it to find one of theirs as powerful as Cam is."

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"Wow are you out of the loop," Adam snorted. "Gramps – there are at least two wars already going on in Tejina. Including with angels and gods. And fairies have already found Cam and begun hunting him. He fought a Fairy Lord."

"How did you survive?" Alex looked at the boys.

"I have anti-fae guns," Eden answered. "Three bullets are three bullets, regardless of how powerful the fae is."

Alex nodded in response as the barrier signaled the arrival of food, and he poked at Eden's mind, quietly slipping through the weak mental defenses he had. It didn't take him long to find the memories of the incident, and the truth of it.

He was surprised they had managed to kill Silviar, just the two of them, but after viewing the memories of Eden's on it, he understood how they succeeded. Surprise, and a demigod's strength and speed.

With that known, he turned his mind to Cameron's to see the younger boy's view of the events. Immediately, he recoiled as the sense of thousands of minds assaulted him, though another assault continued for a few moments after he'd pulled out.

Cameron gave him a sharp glare, letting him know that the mental probe had definitely been noticed, and its source as well.

"Cameron," Alex was surprised that the boy had detected his probe. "How big is your range for your empathy?"

"Around fourteen hundred feet in diameter."

"Interesting," Alex said. "How long has it been that far?"

"About six hours."

In other words, Cameron had only recently brought it to that distance.

"I have two more questions regarding it," Alex said. "How are you able to handle thousands of minds brushing yours at once?"

"I based it off of selective hearing," Cameron returned his focus to his food. "Looking only for specific things I'm sensing to pay attention to. Adam's been working with me on it."

"Weren't you at only around three hundred feet a couple of months ago?" Adam asked.

"Perhaps."

"Doesn't that mean you're sensing all, like, fourteen thousand people here?" Eden asked.

"Yes."

"Second question," Alex said. "How are you penetrating the barriers in every pulpit preventing any form of eavesdropping, including mental?"

"So that's what those were?" Cameron asked.

"You didn't break them, did you?"

"No, but I bypassed them pretty easily," Cameron said. "There are small cracks in the barrier. I guess that explains why it resisted me until I went through the cracks. The auction's starting."

Cameron resumed eating as he watched the auction. A lot of the items starting out that night were potions of one sort or another. As much as he wanted a couple of them – like the one that would let him fly for nearly an hour – he knew that Adam could probably recreate them at a much, much cheaper price.

Eventually, things moved to the main purpose of the fourth night: slaves. At first, mundane slaves were brought out. Some children, some adults. The ones starting out were cheap, and bidding started at a hundred dollars. By the tenth slave, however, they were starting over five hundred.

Each slave, Cameron noticed, had a bronze collar around their neck, etched with runes. He knew from Adam's description that those were different from mage slave collars in that they prevented magic from awakening entirely. The collars themselves were impossible to make, Adam said, the recipe for them lost thousands of years ago.

Since they were worth thousands, a clause of the slavery contract required them to be returned to the slave master who owned the collar when the slave died, as a way to allow them to be used on even cheap slaves.

Twenty slaves were auctioned off before the first of the mage slaves was brought out, a fifteen-year-old African girl who had recently awakened to necromantic roots. She wasn't the common type of mage with necromantic roots, either – instead of being able to converse with the dead, she could reanimate bodies without a ritual. A very rare type of necromantic root.

She wore a bronze collar around her neck with purple and silver runes, which he knew was used to punish her, much in the same way as the bronze collars on mundane slaves, but also to restrict her magic and prevent her from using it against whoever owned her key.

Those collars could still be forged.

Cameron heard Alex swear under his breath, then tap at his tablet as soon as the bidding began. Based on his education under his mentor, he knew that necromancers with that as their root were rare, but considered powerful, because a ritual was normally needed if one wanted to keep their magic cost down. Root magics always cost less than any others.

Bidding on her started at eight hundred dollars, and increased over six minutes until she was sold at nearly five grand. Someone other than Alex wanted her badly, and went at war with him until eventually giving up.

Cameron wasn't surprised by that. Anytime Adam or Alex wanted something, they bid until the other bidders gave up.

The night ended after forty-six mage slaves were sold, three of whom Alex had purchased. In addition to the necromancer girl, he also bought a six-year-old boy with fireballs as his root spell, and a twenty-two-year-old girl with force magic.

They left, returning to their homes early in the morning, and went about their usual routine for the day, including attending the auction that night. Alex bought four more mage slaves that night, though he had to pay nearly a hundred grand for the ten-year-old boy with blood magic.

That boy reminded Cameron of Greyson, and made him wonder how his friend was doing. He didn't know how to contact Greyson, and Adam and Eden didn't, either, or he would've. The agents hadn't been at the warehouse, or he'd have tried that way.

The next time something significant happened in the auctions was the eighth night, when the final item – the last ten each night were always kept as a mystery until they were shown by the auctioneer – was revealed.

Contained within a wooden box enchanted to preserve it, what looked to be a human heart rested. The box itself had been opened only long enough to verify its contents. Unlike the other hearts sold that night, among the other various harvested body parts, that one drew a lot of interest the moment its source was revealed.

"And for our final item," the auctioneer said. "We have here the genuine heart of the Fairy Lord Silviar. As everyone here likely knows by now, the fairies launched an attack on Tejina City a week before Halloween. During that fight, the Fairy Lord made an appearance, and the one who slayed him has offered us his heart.

"The heart of many magical creatures have great use in enchanting and alchemy," the auctioneer continued. "The heart of the fae are no different. Able to be used in some of the most powerful potions ever discovered, the heart of a fae lord is considered one of the One Hundred Ultimate Reagents.

"For this very special reagent," the auctioneer said. "Bidding goes in increments of one hundred thousand, and begins at one million. Begin!"

"Pretty sure that's not fed to a dog," Adam looked at Eden.

"I saw an opportunity to make money," Eden snorted. "Million bucks for a heart that was just sitting there? Fuck yeah."

Cameron went to open his mouth.

"I'm splitting it with you, don't worry," Eden ruffled his hair, and Cameron immediately went to fix it, causing his friend and his mentor to laugh as Alex looked on in amusement.