NOVEL NEXT 148- I Know You Have Light Magic.
After getting cleaned up and slipping into a dress, I go to Mary's room to find her. She's been acting strange ever since I said hello. Finally, I can't take it anymore, and as soon as we get out of the carriage, I suggest we grab some tea and pastries at that bakery from the other day before heading to the seamstress.
"Mary, what's wrong?" I ask once we're seated with our orders in front of us.
It's a cozy little table, with its delicate embroidered tablecloth positioned near a window. The aroma of the tea is relaxing, and I'm holding back the urge to devour the chocolate and raspberry tart in front of me.
The young woman looks at me and hesitates, like whatever she wants to say is hard to get out.
"Is it about your mission? About what you had to go through?"
"No," she shakes her head. "The mission went well, the girls were rescued, and Bob's family is reunited."
"How are you doing?" I ask.
Because having a knife held to her throat had to be terrifying and intense, at the very least.
"I'm fine, Bianca, thanks to Ronan. Well, and Theodore and Berta too. They all helped me so much. If you're talking about when the baronet took me hostage, don't worry about it. My life wasn't what mattered then: saving the girls was."
"What do you mean your life wasn't important?" I get angry for a moment. "If you're not okay, if something happens to you, you won't be able to keep helping people, so cut it out with that nonsense."
"You're right, sorry."
I take a sip of tea and a bite of that delicious cake to calm myself. Even though she's agreeing with me, I'm not sure she actually gets it.
"There's nothing to apologize for, but that wasn't it, was it? You're acting weird around me. Tell me, what's going on?"
Mary closes her eyes and sighs.
"Fine. This is hard to say because I feel hurt by your lack of trust. Ronan let something slip—something about you. And don't blame him; the poor guy didn't even realize."
I frown. I don't like this.
"Why are you hiding that you have light magic?" she blurts out.
So that's what it is? I relax.
Who knows what could have slipped out of Ronan when he was with Mary. He holds her in high regard, and it's like he lets his guard down around her.
"How do you know I have it?"
"Ronan said that you and I, as users of light magic, needed to be protected precisely because our affinity made us too good for this world."
Oh. That's what he thinks of me? I get it with Mary, but with me...
"And he didn't realize that gave me away?"
"No."
"Well, I'm going to have to talk to him and ask him to be more careful."
"Yes, because he let something slip in the pyramid dungeon too," Mary agrees. "Only there he didn't say it exactly like that, and we all thought he meant you're innocent, like I might be since I have light magic."
"Don't go overboard, mine's only a medium affinity."
"That's not a bad thing to have, Bianca. It's nice to see the good in people, not prejudge them or assume everyone's thinking about doing unethical or wrong things."
I roll my eyes. Am I really like her?
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A young goblin with pleading big eyes pops into my mind. And a puppy, a little black wolf that the adult white ones were going to kill.
But that's not the same thing. They're both good; I judged them right. Well, maybe not entirely...
Ugh.
"Fine, I'm not going to argue this," I tell her, since I know I'd lose.
"So why have you been hiding it from me? I have light magic too." She reaches across the table and takes my hand, the one still holding the spoon. She squeezes it reassuringly. "Bianca, I'm your friend. Whatever problem you have that's making you hide your affinity, you can tell me. I'll help if I can, you know that. Oh," she says like she just realized something," is it because of the head injury?"
I burst out laughing.
I'm sorry, but this is too absurd.
A head injury is going to change my personality and give me light magic?
That excuse I made up about not remembering things from the past—the young woman has taken it way too seriously, especially with her working to improve her healing magic to help me.
"Mary, do you promise that what I'm about to tell you won't leave this table?" I say as I lean toward her and lower my voice.
It's an impulse. I know some people think I shouldn't be so impulsive, but I believe in Mary. I have a feeling this is the right thing to do and what I should have done weeks ago.
I look around.
The bakery is pretty empty. There are two waitresses behind the counter and a couple of other occupied tables with customers, not too close to ours.
The probability that they have air magic and are using it to eavesdrop on two young ladies is pretty ridiculous. Especially since one table has a mother with three kids and the other has some older women quietly talking about their own stuff.
"Of course, you know you can trust me. You have my word," she says, also lowering her voice.
"I don't just have light magic, and the head injury thing is a lie. Nobody knows this, but I come from another world."
Well, that's technically incorrect. The seed knows, since it came with me into the dungeon for travelers from other worlds. And it had to somehow see what the system was showing me, because it moved my hand to select the difficulty it wanted.
But nobody else knows. I should tell Ronan since he knows everything else and might even suspect it. Or maybe he knows on his own, because his "invisible friend" told him.
Berta caught on, but I stuck to my story that I'm Bianca and don't remember anything because of the injury, and that it changed my personality.
Oops... the exact same absurd excuse I just laughed at.
As for Mary, she's opened her eyes wide and is staring at me in amazement, waiting for me to continue. I do.
"A few months ago, I woke up in this body. I don't know how I got here. I made up the head injury story to justify not knowing anyone. I don't have Bianca's memories."
Oh no...
She is still trying—not to figure out if I'm lying to her, since she'd never think that of me—but to process the information. And I just realized that only I would think to drop something like this on her in public.
The decision to tell her, I repeat, was an impulse. I need a friend. I can't keep carrying this secret all by myself. Like how Elisa had Beatrice, and I really do miss her.
Mary, even though her personality is quite different, is the closest thing to that kind of best friend I have now. And since I'm not going to lie to her about the light magic, I'll tell her everything.
Except about the puppy.
Not that, for now. Because even though I know Mary is compassionate and would accept me even if I'm going to be a future demon queen, it's not something I'm ready to share yet.
Yeah, Ronan knows, but he saw my entire stone slab and recognized the divine beast.
In these seconds of silence I'm giving her to process the bomb I just dropped, I notice Mary has gone pale. Also, the mother with the kids isn't looking, but the older women are definitely staring at us. A bunch of gossips...
"Are you okay? Did you choke on something?" I ask Mary in a tone that the waitresses can definitely hear. "Drink some tea."
She does, slowly, taking her time to recover.
"Yes, better now, thanks," she tells me.
I notice the ladies go back to their own business.
A few minutes pass before Mary speaks again.
We're still leaning toward each other and keeping our voices low. It probably looks like something else.
"I had no idea," she says sweetly. "It must have been so hard, I imagine, waking up in an unknown place and not even being yourself."
"Don't worry about it. I like this world and this life."
"But what about the original Bianca?"
"I don't know. Maybe she's in my world, in my body."
"And how can you live like that, not knowing how your real family is doing?"
"Because I want to think that if she's there, she'll behave without straying too far from the script, just like I'm doing here."
Actually, the Bianca with earth magic was a bland girl, but not bad in herself. She let Sol guide her. I trust she won't say anything that could hurt my parents, and what's the worst that could happen? That they fire her from work? When I go back, if I go back, I can find a better job—mine wasn't that great anyway.
"That's very thoughtful of you. Should I keep calling you Bianca?"
"Of course."
"Well, I think trusting her is the best thing you can do. You wouldn't accomplish anything by worrying. It's just that, knowing you, it doesn't fit that you'd be so calm about it."
"You're right about that," I frown as I realize. "Maybe it's an effect of this world-traveling thing? Like a defense mechanism they gave me so I wouldn't go crazy with worry or keep turning things over in my head, imagining the terrible things a fake me could be doing or saying to my parents."
"Could be. You don't even know if she's there, but I understand. It's better to believe she is and trust that whoever did this left both of you a way to return to your previous lives if you want to."
I nod.