I slept for a long, long time. Days, in fact. After that long slumber, I woke up without anyone forcing me to wake up for the first time in a long while. The first thing I noticed when I opened my eyes was the bright sunlight. Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see that I was in an elegantly adorned room with cream colored wallpaper that had graceful swirls of brown on it, windowsills with lavish yet classy embossing, lacy baby blue curtains that looked so soft they could’ve been made into clothes, and finally, a perfectly shined marble floor.
“Where…” I started, but was interrupted before I could finish.
“My lady! You’re up!” A new voice exclaimed from the door, making me jump and instantly curl up in a ball. “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry, my lady. Did I scare you?”
Did she just apologize? To me?
I thought, then cautiously looked up at the woman who had now entered the room. She had ginger hair with freckles on her nose and cheeks. She looked pretty friendly overall, but my heart still continued pounding.
“Hello, my lady. Forgive me for the late introduction. I’m Eliza, your nanny,” she smiled.
“…Liza? Nanny?” I repeated after a short pause.
“Yes, my lady. I’ll be taking care of you from now on. Please call me Eliza, or Liza, or whatever else you’d like,” she smiled again as I contemplated why on earth this woman was saying that she’d be taking care of me in confusion. “Her grace asked me to look after you before passing away,” she continued.
Her grace. I remember hearing that before. So the woman who died when I was born
was
my mom after all. I thought so,
I thought as Eliza continued to explain.
“When her grace was about one month away from her due date, she suddenly went into labor and gave birth to you at the capital. And right around then, beasts started showing up in the neighboring lands out of nowhere,” she paused while gazing at me with sorrowful eyes, then continued. “We wanted to bring you here as soon as possible, but we couldn’t because it was too dangerous. I have longed for the day I’d get to finally meet you, my lady.”
Though it seemed like she was telling the truth, I couldn’t help but wonder if she really was. I couldn’t believe that I was now to be taken care of by someone. Not after all that I heard from
the woman.
Not after I’d been told over and over that she was the only one kind enough to look after a kid like me and that I was abandoned by my own family.
“…But she said that no one would ever want me,” I said quietly.
“Who said that?” Eliza asked immediately. When I didn’t answer, she asked again, “Was it that woman? Forget all that she said, my lady. It was all lies.”
I wanted to believe her, but it was hard. Eliza seemed to have noticed that from my silence. Instead of wallowing in this depressing subject, she quickly found something else for us to talk about.
“You’re wearing her grace’s ring.”
And let me say, it worked.
“This is mom’s ring?” I asked right away.
“It sure is, my lady. That’s the ring she wore all her life,” answered Eliza.
I looked at the ring with quizzical eyes. This was the ring I’d received from that pregnant lady before being executed in my previous life. I was wondering why it was still on my finger after I’d been reborn. So how could this be my mother’s?
“She must have given it to you before passing away. I remember her saying once that it adjusts its size on its own to match the owner’s finger. It really is quite a fascinating thing,” she remarked.
So that’s why it didn’t just slip off my scrawny finger! Who knew?
I thought to myself. The question of how this ring ended up on my finger in this life still stood, but it wasn’t like I could tell Eliza that this ring was actually the ring I received from a pregnant lady before dying or anything like that.
One thing at a time,
I thought as I decided to just focus on taking in the present reality for now.
“Liza, I have a question,” I said.
“Anything, my lady,” she said affectionately.
Encouraged by her warmth, I took a deep breath and asked the most important question, “What’s my name?”
***
Name: Vivierre Andante. Age: 2.9 (my third birthday was only a couple days away). Nationality: Ibritten, the same country from my second life. And the man who came to save me that day: my father, Duke of Andante.
What am I supposed to make of this?
I questioned as I thought over what I knew on my way to the dining room to join my father for lunch.
All Ibrittonians knew that there were three dukedoms in the country: the dukedoms of Andante, Schubitz, and Rian. The dukedom of Andante was known for developing weapons and magical instruments, Schubitz was known for being one of the founding members of the country, and Rian was known for their long lineage of Sword Masters. But there was one more thing the dukedom of Andante was known for: their unwavering, unfaltering vileness. People often said that the Andantes would even murder their own kin if they got in the way. The cold, cruel nature of these people was apparently just in their blood.
If the rumors are true, the fact that I’m his daughter wouldn’t really matter to him,
I concluded. I was fine with that, though. It wasn’t anything new. After all, I didn’t have a warm, loving family in either of my previous lives.
Nothing new,
I thought to myself again.
I recalled the first time I’d met my father. He definitely seemed like a frightening man. And there wasn’t even an inkling of affection in the way he looked at me. So, the reason he saved me from the hellhole was probably just that I was his biological daughter and a member of this family, and now that all the beasts were taken care of, it was time to take me home. Yes, that was probably all.
So what am I going to do now?
I thought. From what I heard, everyone who had the Andante blood coursing through their veins had some kind of an extraordinary talent. For example, this person would be extremely good at magic, that person would be so smart that they came up with a widely used magical formula, and another person would go on to invent some crazy weapon… so on and so forth. But there was nothing that extraordinary about me yet. Moreover, it seemed like I was nothing like what people would expect of an
Andante
.
What if the years of malnutrition starved that genius out of me? What if I’m the family weirdo?
I thought to myself. I was already far from what’s expected of an Andante: cruel and ambitious.
The only “ambition” I had right now was to
stay alive
. I’d never made it long in my past lives. In the first one, I died before I could really even get out there in the world, and in my second life I died at the tragically young age of fifteen. I’d like to get to die of natural causes just this once. Is that so much to ask?
Wait,
I paused as I suddenly remembered something. I’d made a promise to my father that I’d do anything he wanted me to do if he just took me with him. What if that was the reason he brought me back? If that were the case, the second he realizes that I’m not all that extraordinary, that I’m not quite a proper Andante…
My heart started to pound as the fear of being abandoned again engulfed me.
“We’re here, my lady,” said Eliza. I snapped out of my thoughts and looked up to find lion head sculptures fixed on both doors to the dining room. Precious stones were in place of the lions’ eyes and more were decorating their manes.
Fancy,
I whistled in my head.
Very fitting for a duke’s dining room
. The abundant evidence of wealth in this castle made the thought of getting kicked out all the more miserable. No parent would ever sacrifice their time and money to raise a child just because they’re their child. At least not in my experience. Yes, people talk about paternal and maternal love, blah blah blah, but I didn’t believe any of that.
But that didn’t mean that I was just going to sit there and let all of this be taken away from me. I wanted to grow up surrounded by this wealth, to never to have to worry about going hungry. I’d be happy to leave once I was old enough to make it out in the world on my own, but I didn’t want to be kicked out before then.
I’m going to make Dad love me,
I thought determinedly.
I’m going to make him love me, and I’m going to make it in this household. At least until I can stand on my own two feet.
I took a deep breath, then entered the dining room, feeling like I was stepping into a battlefield.
There he was, sitting at the far end of the long golden table with mounds of food, his nose buried in some papers.
He really is handsome,
I thought to myself as I recalled the day I first met him. I’d thought he looked quite good then, but knowing that he was my dad somehow made him seem even more admirable.
Moreover, his charisma was overwhelming me even though he wasn’t even looking at me.
So this is what’s asked of the title, Duke of Andante,
I thought.
“Your grace, Lady Vivierre is here,” announced Eliza.
When Dad looked up from the papers, I quickly scurried over to him and said as politely and adorably I could, “Thank you for bwinging me here, Father. I pwomise I’ll be a good girl, study hard, and…” I paused for a moment when the papers he was reading until now came halfway into view as I looked up. A large sphere was drawn at the top followed by equations after equations, making it all look extremely complicated, but…
Is he trying to find the volume of the sphere?
As a lover of mathematics who maintained a GPA of 4.0 all throughout college and mastered all sorts of mathematical and physical proofs, finding the answer to the mess on that page was a piece of cake.