The Villainess Will Not Bring Dishonor To Her Family

136 - Choices of the Minor Nobles

Magdalin Ruche's Point Of View

Both my mother and father are blessed by earth faeries, and so are all my grandparents. As expected from a noble family, although lesser noble, there is a certain pride in specializing in a single element like the dukes and marquesses.

A lot of political deals end up going into breeding children with the best mana quality for us lesser nobles. It is first and foremost a fad for lesser nobles. After all, they don't go to war so they don't need to ensure that their child will be able to learn the secret family spells that some nobles have.

I never talked with Lily-sama about this. From what I know, her mother had forced herself into a marriage with her father, and I imagine that is the only reason her mother is not a water blessed person.

You may already know... but I am blessed by the element of wind. I don't just mean that I am blessed by a wind fairy, but that my mana is quite potent in its wind attributes... which made part of my hair discolor. It's nothing as big as Lily's watery silky hair, Eric's dark blue one, Gilbert's red one... William Aerielle's bright and clear teal eyes or Soleil's sunshine colored hair and pale yellow eyes.

If your hair and eyes take on the colors of the element you have, then you usually get the blessing of a medium ranked fairy or better since it means your mana is potent enough to draw interest from the faeries... but for me it ended up being a curse.

Your mana is determined by your parents' mana... as such, you can imagine the disaster it was when the locks of teal hair revealed potent air magic rather than earth... since everyone in my family were blessed by earth. It was a problem from the moment I was born.

Even as I grew up I would hear the constant accusations that my mother had been cheating on my father with one of the northern marquesses, which she obviously denied. In turn she would accuse the maids for switching me out with the real child...

In the end even my two older brothers started believing my mother... they still do...

Because of this unconfirmed suspicion my parents were always... strict... especially in studies. They started beating my hands with a cane long before I turned five. The first time was probably for 'studies' or not memorizing words and etiquette, but it ended up being used whenever I did something they disliked. On a bad day... I could do nothing right.

They made me wear gloves to hide my failures from everyone else, and I still hear them compare how well everyone else is doing since they've no scars on their hands... but scarring ruins the prospects of being married... and I know that they know this since I've heard them argue about how to use their false daughter when she's too old to marry.

I heard this the first time when I was nine... I stopped talking with Millet Greenhall after that even though I had liked him.

I think a lot of the other people noticed that something was wrong. At least the adults... but no one ever said anything. Probably to let my parents save face... or perhaps just because they didn't care. I was just a possibly bastard or non-noble child.

Perhaps because of this... I began to crush on the crown prince when I was small. He always appeared so kind and sweet. He was like a ray of sunlight in my suffocating darkness. I... approached Lily-sama because of her engagement, but I realized pretty quickly that she, like me, was putting up a smiling proud surface. We ended up talking about the crown prince for many, many countless hours on end. I think he was a light to both of us... no... perhaps not a light... just a fake hope to cling to.

The first one to ever truly bring me light was Lily-sama. After she got the prophecy she changed. She became confident and noticed a lot of little things, my... troubles... as well. Back then the back of my hands had been ripped to blood under the white gloves and the injuries were covered with scabs that were almost black. Yet... when she took my hands and whispered the prayer the pain disappeared. I was pretty surprised, but probably not as much as when I took off the gloves and rubbed over the scabs that fell off. The skin was still scarred, but it was fully healed. Not even irritated.