Chapter 16

Even after I arrived home , my wrist felt like it was still burning.

' Sigh..this is crazy. I'm a grown woman not a girl. Why am I reacting like this?'

Every time my mind wandered to the few minutes I encountered Mister Cain , my heart would speed up and my face would burn. Marry kept asking me if I was okay, she was so worried I thought she needed a doctor not me.Eventually I had to tell her the shopping session tired me more than I expected.

Upon arriving home, I met father and mother who were returning from one of their strolls around the mansion. To say they were shocked about the amount of shopping I did is an understatement,their mouth and eyes were twitching non stop that I debated if I should call a doctor or not. Father kept opening and closing his mouth like a fish on land. I'm sure he wanted to say something but decided against it several times and I admit ,I really did overspend but seeing how the old Alida hadn't been shopping in over two years I had to fulfill both our wishes no? I might not have a single plan to avenge the old Alida and hurt Jane, but from what I've seen so far, there's no need to trouble myself. After her marriage her sand castle will come crashing down, the world is fair, you can't build your happiness on someone else's misfortune, sooner or later you'll reap what you sow and in Jane's case it won't take long seeing how much of a man whore Julian is.

At the same time as we were in the living room, Jane came down the stairs and hearing us talk decided to see what was happening. The moment she opened the living room door her mouth dropped open and her eyes were big as a ball.

"Wha ... what's this ?"

Turning to her my smile grew more and strolled to the entrance.

"Ah? Jane..you're here. Good. Come ..come inside."

Grabbing her hand i gently dragged her in the middle of the room with me and mother and father.

" I went shopping today." I said to her.

" Shopping? And..and you bought all this?" Still feeling stupefied even after a few minutes of ogling the bags.

" Yes! I bought everything you see .. although there might be some more later in the day ." I responded to her, pondering if everything really arrived or not.

"Alida ...this .. . isn't this too much?" While saying so she kept glancing at father hoping to agree with her. Maybe if she was lucky I could get a scolding, but none of that happened as father and mother had a helpless look on their faces and small smiles.

"It is indeed to much... that's why I bought everyone a gift. I'm not that selfish to keep everything to myself, especially when I have such a loving family."

Right after I finished saying that, I started rummaging through the bags and passed everyone their presents. For father I bought an exquisite gold and purple fountain pen custom made with our family's insignia and a paper holder in the same colors, a furry blanket , smooth to the touch,since he would often work up late. For mother I bought a set of jewelry, a pair of earrings, a bracelet, a necklace and a hair ornament, all adorned with blue stones, a deep blue shawl with white and light blue flower patters on the edges and a fountain pen in the same color and logo as father but with a feminine touch to it. For Jane I bought a dress in baby blue color her favorite color, from her favorite designer with shoes and a set of jewelry to match. Aryan's present, I gave it to a maid to put it in his room with a note attached to it.

I could see everyone was happy with their presents and this brought me great satisfaction.

Later that day after we finished with the family dinner, returning to my room I kept searching through Alida's memories to find a simple spell. My mana pool was big enough and after doing some small exercises to help with mana control, I decided it was time to practice spells . It didn't take long to find the first spell learned at the Academy. It was called 'lightning bolt' , and just as the name suggested it was a miniature version of a lightning bolt.

Taking deep breaths and raising my right hand ,I concentrated on my palm, imagining a small lightning in my mind. It didn't take long , fortunately I succeeded in my first try. I repeated the same action until I emptied my mana pool, this also helps our mana pool to increase, so emptying your mana pool like this is a must.

Of course for more elaborate spells you need to chant for the mana to manifest , but for something so small, as long as you have a little imagination you can manage.

For the next week I repeated this spell , emptying my mana pool once in the morning and once at night. Since my mana pool was small and we had the white blueish plants around here, filling my mana pool was easy, not to mention i sticked to my four times a day mediation time.

Except for these two tasks, i also exercised how to shock someone with just a touch of my finger, and for this i concentrated my mana at the tip of my fingers and discharged small amounts of electricity in the air. I asked Marry to bring me a stone as big as a pumpkin and kept drilling holes in it, bit by bit , without cracking the stone in the process. I wanted to make a perfect hole in the stone at first, just enough for one of my fingers to fit and then, after managing this and having a better control over my lightning I wanted to be able to blast the stone apart from the inside out. This was harder than I expected, at first I barely scratched the stone, than in a fit of anger I let all my mana out and blasted half the stone apart. I ended with a few light scratches on my hands and face, the room was a mess, with debris in all directions and a few scratches on the furniture. Needless to say I got a scolding from Marry and a proper scolding from mother. After this, father arranged for me to do my magic on the training grounds supervised by a guard and one of my maids and he also provided me with a stone tablet made of some unknown material, wich apparently it was good exercise for mana control. The stone tablet was two meters high and one meter in length, black in color and in some places some gray. It looked more like a piece of marble but apparently it wasn't.