Ella finished her breakfast in a few bites, and then underwent her magic awakening with Elos's help. Calling it a magic awakening rather oversold it; there was no grand spectacle, and it was not quite what Ella had pictured.
Elos simply laid a hand on Ella's shoulder and let a thick, faintly warm current of mana flow into her body.
"Quiet your mind. Let your awareness follow my mana around once. Roughly speaking, where it passes is where your magic circuit is. After that, you can try to control the mana inside you."
Elos's voice was unusually gentle, with a note of awkwardness in it.
Ella did as she was told, and soon a rough outline drew itself faintly inside her.
She closed her eyes, and opened them, and the world behind them seemed changed.
She put out a finger and released only a little mana, and Ella could see the elements drifting in the air being drawn to it, gathering slowly.
She pushed more mana out and soon had an elemental orb condensed in front of her, and her delight overflowed.
Elos's mouth twisted again.
"That's enough. You can use mana now. The rest is practice, day after day, to raise the precision of your control."
While helping Ella awaken, Elos had also noticed that the girl's mana capacity was far larger than an ordinary person's.
That was a result of Ella having lived two lives, though Elos didn't care. Even at nearly twice a normal person's capacity, to a cursed duke's daughter it was a drop in the bucket.
She had done half a good deed, more or less, and Elos felt awkward about it. She moved away without actually leaving, and watched Ella practice from a distance.
***
After that day, Ella's life changed. She was no longer so downcast—or rather, she went back to being the way she had been when she first arrived.
Once she recovered she went to practice magic every day, and although the jade pendant showed no sign of awakening, Ella no longer worried about it so much. At least now she had something to fall back on.
Elos's kindness did not last long. Once Ella was well the torments came just as frequently as before, and she still went hungry as a matter of course. Half a month or so passed badly.
"Little madam, milady wants you to go and wash her horse."
Coming out of the training ground after half a day's practice, Ella was given Elos's instruction by Katherine.
"Understood. I'll go now."
Ravenous, Ella rubbed her stomach.
What was Elos thinking? Probably that she wanted to watch her brush down a horse she didn't know and get kicked across the yard for it.
Knowing exactly what was being planned, Ella went anyway. There was no help for it. She might have magic now, but she was still on Elos's ground.
At the stables the horse gave a snort, and Ella picked up a bucket and a brush and set to it with her teeth gritted.
"Damned bastard milady. One of these days, you had better not let me catch you."
Ella muttered as she went, testing the brush cautiously against the horse's coat.
At first things went well enough, until she reached the hind legs, and the horse began to shift and fret.
Ella caught it and backed away sharply, and still took a hoof high on her right thigh.
"Sss!..."
She sucked in a breath. The pain came, her vision went black, and Ella dropped the brush and scrambled backward.
The pain kept coming from her thigh, as though the bone had split. It was almost past bearing.
Ella looked up at the chestnut horse in the stable, and it snorted again, as though it thought little of her.
Ella said nothing. She abandoned the job of brushing it down, struggled to her feet, put a hand over her thigh, and limped away toward the keep.
It hurt too much. Not the meat of the thigh; this came from somewhere deep in the bone.
Katherine noticed the limp. She made a trip to the stables, and her gaze rested a while on the offending horse.
"Hoo... hoo..."
Breathing hard, cold sweat beading on her forehead, Ella's walk had gone rather comical.
There was nothing to be done and no way to get even, so all she could do was swallow it and choke on the unfairness.
"Elos is going to laugh at me again, I expect."
Or rather, being kicked by that damned horse had been the point all along.
Ella's resentment had very nearly taken on physical form.
"Little madam, there's someone here for you."
A maid stopped her. At some point the name had spread beyond Katherine alone.
Ella neither accepted it nor argued. She had never once felt like Elos's madam; she did not know whose madam ended up in a state like this.
"Hoo... right, understood."
Ella changed direction. Who would it be? She had no friends and nobody close to her; whoever came would be Sephone or her father, and her father almost certainly wouldn't come. So there was only one answer.
Remembering the girl, Ella felt her own wretchedness again. She was no longer the boy who could charge forward on his own and put himself in front of her.
Ella limped up to the castle gate, and from a long way off Sephone saw her stagger.
Something shadowed passed behind the lenses of her glasses. She stood where she was, hands twisting anxiously together.
"Sephone! You came. Is there... is there news from Father? Is he going to let me leave?"
She held out little hope, but Ella still hoped, still wanted to hear something good.
Sephone's shoulders shook. She said nothing, and the look in Ella's eyes cooled a degree at a time.
"Still no? Hoo... I understand. It's all right. It's more than enough that you came to see me..."
"Auntie is dead."
Before Ella could finish, Sephone spoke.
The expression on Ella's face froze in place, and the gladness that had come from seeing Sephone began to peel away from her.
"Wh— what?"
Ella's mouth opened. She couldn't quite believe it.
"Big Brother Ella, your mother... she died of her illness."
Sephone's head was down.
She had come here to report a death.
Her right leg had only just been injured, and hearing the news on top of it, Ella's first reaction was disbelief. But Sephone plainly had no reason to lie to her.
Ella's body went slack. She was still standing, but her frame seemed to have stooped.
"When?"
"Two days ago. I traveled through the night once I heard."
Sephone looked at the grieving girl and put out a hand. She badly wanted to hold her.
The guards blocked it, and the thought came to nothing.
"Hoo... why? Why did Mother die? And Father? Didn't he sell me? He had the money, didn't he? Why did it happen?"
Ella's head hung. Her mind was blank, and she repeated the question quietly, over and over.
Had her father taken the money and not treated her mother's illness? Had that man sold her and then spent it on something else?
Ella remembered clearly that her mother's illness had never been terminal. There had simply never been money for the medicine.
Ella pressed a hand to her chest. It hurt as though a needle had gone into it.
Strictly speaking, the woman who had died was only this life's mother. But... so what? In this world, was she not born of her? Had she not been cared for by her for fifteen years?
Ella's eyes stung, her legs gave out, and she went down on her knees on the ground.
The corners of her eyes ached, and clear tears slid down without a sound.
Sephone looked at the one who had once saved her, kneeling there, and her lips moved. Then she turned and left.
She was going back to beg Ella's father, to buy Ella out of this. Ella's mother was already dead. Was there any meaning left in leaving Ella in this castle to suffer?
Sephone didn't know.