One Year Later
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I decided to try my best to become strong.
To do that, I needed to walk to train, and that's why I abandoned my initial strategy of laying as low as possible, and began walking at 8 months old. In all honesty, it was hard not to walk before that, as I was deeply annoyed with being carried in everyone's arms like a toy. But if I had started it before that, it would be suspicious. Though, walking at 8 months old was slightly suspicious, in a way that some began calling me a genius.
"Ah, why did such a genius had to be a mute?" "It seems like she's extremely blessed by the Gods, not just in magic, but in everything else." "Sweet Gods, I've never seen a baby walking at that age." These are some of things I'm still hearing now, seven months after that, as I'm currently a year and three months old.
If I hadn't gotten back to being a baby three times aside from now, I would be crawling with anxiety to grow up as fast as possible, to be able to feel like a person again. Because let me tell you, when you know how it feels to be a teen or an adult, you don't consider the being-a-baby phase as being your own person.
Nevertheless, I've been through this more times than I consider it good, so I'm trying to use my time the best I can. Such as escaping to the Royal library in the middle of the night to read, which my Knights saw but thankfully didn't say anything about it, as the library is located on the nearest wing at north from mine, so it's not that far from my chambers. Though it does seem like a lot, given how short my one-year-old legs are.
In my past lives I never took as much advantage from all the insane knowledge in magic of our Royal library, as in my 1st life I was busy being a kid, in my 2nd I was too focused on staying away from anyone, in my 3rd I was too scared to try it out, and in my 4th I was more focused on physical training than books. This time it'll be different. One thing that I've heard in all of my lives is how the Alderidge Royal Library has the biggest and best asset of magical books in the entire Midgard. I can't let that pass, as I can acquire a lot of power with these books.
Thankfully, as a Alderidge Princess, I have access to every single book in here, while outsiders have access to only 45% percent of it. Really a given. It even made me happy for being of this family, can you believe it? How fortunate and privileged. If I had taken advantage of this in my past lives, maybe I could have met a better end.
But thinking like that won't take me anywhere. As much as I despise reincarnating and want to break this forsaken looping the Gods put me on, this is an opportunity. My 5th opportunity, and I won't be letting it get on my 8th life to make it work just because it's the so-called lucky number. That ain't bringing no luck. This shit number keep getting on my nerves, especially because everyone keeps saying I'm a lucky child, stuff like that just because of all the 8 numbers present in my birth.
Though I guess I did bring luck to the Alderidge in of my past lives. By selling me, they got their precious military protection and we're safe from the war, even though it happened in the Ivory Continent and we take most of the territory. It would be dumb of any Kingdom to harm Alderidge regardless, our magical wisdom and magical assets are too important for that. The point is, by using me, my family got lucky to be protected during the war, while I got the smaller side of the stick, with little to no luck.
Reincarnating would be a blessing if it wasn't a curse.
Back to my current life, something very unexpected happened to me, and that never happened in any of my four lives. Aaron and Malia, my paternal grandparents, as well as Medea and Maven, my great-grandparents, the ones I took my beauty from, came to the Capital in the moment they heard that I had taken after them. They were all living in the furthermost west of the Kingdom, in Ylohnu, the town with the biggest concentration of natural magic in Alderidge, and when I turned 8 months old, around the time I began walking, they moved to the Capital.
That never happened. Never!
If I'm not mistaken, they never gave two shits about me being their look-alike or not. I met them thrice in my 1st life, twice in my 2nd, four time in my 3rd, and once in my 4th. All because they came for my siblings, never for me. So, yes, I was genuinely caught out of guard with that.
They never did anything against me, I was just nothing to them, so no grudges. By grandpa Aaron and great-grandma Medea, the Late King and the Late-Late Queen, are literally the strongest Fae of our bloodline alive, and the strongest people of the Kingdom. Two of the six strongest elementalists in the current Midgard.
Sharing the spot with Landon Nebelhain the previous Emperor of Nebelhain and Roman's paternal grandfather, who has the strongest out of the three Fire elementals; Lavinia Palant, black panther shifter and matriarch of the Onyx Island of the Archipelago Blackwell, who is bonded to the Earth King elemental; Jaymes Shimen, King of the minor Kingdom of Shimen on the United Kingdom, the biggest nation of dwarves in Midgard, who has the strongest Metal elemental; and last to the list, the one who is bonded to the Wood elemental, Felicity Achameria, Crowned Princess of the Achameria Kingdom. Putting the Alderidge Kingdom as the strongest in magic again, for being the only territory with two elementalists bonded to such strong elementals.
Both being of my two strongest elements. Air and Water. Grandpa having Oceanus of Water, and great-grandma being bonded to Eurus of Air. So, yes, it's overwhelming to be near them.
I can feel the presence of their elements every time they get slightly near me. The pressure of their mere existence, even if I can't see them, I feel their invisible stares on me, as if they can sense I'm weird and with an older soul that it meets the eye. I've tried to pretend to be sleeping when they came to visit, but they can tell I'm awake.
Thankfully, none of them wanted to go back living in the Sunlight Royal Palace, thus, they took the Firelight Castle at the borders of the Capital and far from the palace for themselves. To my dismay, nonetheless, they come here every damn morning to see me. I guess retirement might have really bored the shit out of them. Especially my great-grandparents, as they are both two of the oldest Fae in the Kingdom.
I wish that was all. No. To make things ever weirder, my grand-uncle, Aaron's two-years younger brother, Christian Alderidge, a forever-single Prince addicted to traveling around Midgard, also decided to live for some years in Alderidge again, just to watch her growing up because he found me to be an "interesting jewel". Sharing both his mother's black hair and citrine eyes, and also looking more like me than my parents and siblings. A attack-type mage, also of Yin energy, and of the Air element like both great-grandma and me. An elementalist as well, but with Notus, the third strongest of the four Air elementals, each representing one of the four winds of Midgard.
Boreas of north wind, Eurus of east wind, Notus of south wind, and Zephyrus of west wind, in order of power. They are the four Spirit Kings of Wind Element. There are many others wind elemental spirits, but none as strong as these four. There's only notice of the spirit elementals of the main six elements of Wind, Water, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Wood. Elementalists of our race normally have more affinity with Wind, Water, Earth and Fire spirits above all else; whereas the Shifters have more affinity with Earth and Wood spirits, and the Dwarves with the Earth and Metal. Nevertheless, all three races can bond with the six elemental spirits. Earth is the easiest.
In comparison, there's no history of the Ego or Soul elementals. It is said that only one of each exist, but no one knows anything about them. It was lost in translation, lost in history with time. It's a mystery.
But that isn't important. It's not like two people with the Ego and Soul elements will miraculously appear in my generation. Impossible.
Back to uncle Christian, like me, his second strongest element is Water, which according to all he was filling my ears with, he used both of the elements plus the help of Notus, to fight pirates. Though the dumbass also told me that he acted as a pirate more than once just for the fun of it.
I confess he's cool. I never met him in any of my past lives, so it's a good surprise. But I don't like to have these five elder Fae on my toes all the damn time. As if having my four siblings shadowing me and competing to see who can stay the longest near me, wasn't enough. I'm feed off, which is ironic.
My past selves used to complain of the lack of care and attention given by my family, but now that I'm having it, I can't wait to make it stop. They keep overwhelming me and it's suffocating. I guess I'm really an introvert to the core. I've been so mistreated in my existence, that now I don't even know where to put all of this attention.
Good attention at that. It's not even bad.
And to top it all, none of my siblings are the least concerned or even jealous with the attention our great-grandparents, grandparents, and grand-uncle are flooding me with. I thought that would make them sour, but seems like they were only rude and assholes to me when I was considered to be an Heir, to be the next Queen. How annoying.
I can't help but to wonder that if I had pretended to be a mute on my very first reincarnation, all of this could be different and my unending suffering could have been avoided. But what could I do? I was a child.