Chapter 81: Chapter 81

An old lady replaced poor Sarah. I greeted her, but only got a nod in response. In view of what my previous maid had suffered, I decided to remain silent, in her interest. However, the old woman’s taste in clothing left something to be desired, and she saw no problem in my choosing my own outfits. Her gift for hairdressing, on the other hand, was beyond doubt. I went to dinner wearing a purple dress, the colour of royalty. I had learned at Mortain that a neat appearance often determined the way others looked at us, and the image of Johnny saluting my style with a verb of his own came to mind. I found myself smiling as I walked into the dining room.

I sat in the same place as the day before. Every guest was present, only my brother was missing. My mother was still obsessed with her plate, even though it was empty at the moment. At no time did she look up at me. It certainly should have affected me, but it didn’t, because she immediately made mental contact.

“We need to talk.”

“Finally! I no longer dared to believe it.”

“Althea is watching us closely,” she said, her soft voice insinuating itself into my every thought, “if she suspects that we can communicate by thought, we’re dead.”

“Okay, I understand. When do you want us to have this discussion?”

“I’ll come to your room after dinner.”

“You can do that? Aren’t you locked up somewhere in some dungeon?”

“No, I’m free to move.”

“So you’re leaving tomorrow, Connor, aren’t you?” Priam said as he helped himself to the starter on the dish held out by a footman.

My gaze twitched in the direction of the traitor, who didn’t fail to notice it out of the corner of his eye. His voice sounded feverish though, and I didn’t know what to make of it.

“Where’s he going?” I asked my mother.

“I don’t know. Althea gave him a mission. It doesn’t bode well, in my opinion.”

“Coming from her, you surprise me! I hope it’s dangerous and that Connor doesn’t come back! Well, if that’s possible, because he’s immortal too.”

“Everyone here is,” said my mother.

And indeed, they were. Connor’s tattooed arms rested on the table, and I had the feeling that he was struggling not to glance my way.

“I’ll take the boat tomorrow morning,” he said. “I should be back in two or three weeks at most.”

“Magnus, you might be feeling lonely this whole time,” I said with a smile on my face.

“I will count the days, indeed,” declared Magnus, sullenly.

Tonight he was no longer the Magnus Burton Race I had known. He seemed permanently downcast. I wasn’t complaining about his ignorance, on the contrary, but I thought that having tortured him during our last meeting would still have aroused in him a feeling of revenge, even contempt. But after that night, for some reason, he wasn’t the same.

“Hey,” I said to my mother, “he’s changed a lot.”

“He is what he always was.”

“Well, I don’t think you know about all the crimes he’s committed over the past few centuries.”

“As I’ve already told you, he is what he is.”

I had a hard time hiding my disappointment. How could she say such a thing without knowing what I was talking about?! I had to tell her quickly about what the former Master Hand of the castes was capable of. My brother arrived and apologised for being late with a bow that made me sick to my stomach. He sat down in front of me, nodding.

“You’re making one of those faces, my sister! Have you seen a ghost?”

“Only traitors.”

Then I cut communication.

“Your son will be back soon, Magnus,” Soban said, who had perhaps guessed the reasons for his despondency. “Don’t be so sad.”

“What makes you think I am?”

“Your attitude, my dear. Or is it the fact that your other son has taken your place and that this has led you to come and seek asylum among us?”

“I didn’t feel like I had a choice. As for Carmichael, he’s dead, to me.”

“That’s some way to talk about your direct descendants!”

“Jealousy, no doubt?” I smirked at my stepfather.

Althea, amused, let out a little laugh. Then the end of dinner passed in almost total silence. Nothing in the content of the few conversations that followed told me of the Five’s future plans. Every time I tried to find out more, Althea remained silent, Priam rebuffed me with a scathing response, his sister and brothers ignored me. We went to have tea in the adjoining living room, but again, I failed. The Five could stay in total silence for long minutes, probably long hours, maybe even days. It must have been one of the effects of immortality. Getting information wasn’t going to be easy. So I could only count on my mother and brother. And it was together that they came to visit me after everyone had left the living room. A guard opened the door for them.

Surprised to see my brother alongside Isabelle, I paused.

“What’s he doing here?” I asked my mother.

Her only response was a gesture: she put her index finger to her mouth. It meant shut up. I let them in, understanding that the discussion that was about to take place would only be exchanged by telepathy, at least the most secret elements.

“You’re staying in a nice place, aren’t you?” my mother suddenly declared.

My brother took my arm and motioned me to sit down. He widened his eyes.

“Answer her, as if we were having a normal discussion.”

“Indeed,” I replied, “I’ve known worse. When Magnus made me his hostage, he locked me in a dingy, cold cell full of rats and starved me. The Five are obviously more generous than him.”

“I know what Magnus did to you,” my mother said out loud. “Your brother told me everything.”

“Do you know everything then?”

“Yes. And what he did is unforgivable, he lost his footing.”

“Lost his footing?!” I exclaimed, outraged. “He ordered my rape, locked me up, tortured me and killed my best friend!”

“I know,” she said, moving closer.

One of her hands went to rest on my cheek, as if to comfort me. But it was coldness that I felt. I waved her hand away, stood up and, breathless with anger, went to the balcony hoping that the sound of the waves crashing on the cliff below would dampen the fervour of my outrage. Tears welled up in my eyes, because my disappointment could never have been so great. But who was she, in fact? A woman who had abandoned her two children, that was what she was!

“I know Magnus very well,” she said as she joined me on the balcony with my brother.

They each sat down in an armchair. The time for disclosure had come, so I sat down on the chaise longue, ready to listen to the details of Isabelle Castellane’s story.

“The first time I met Magnus,” she continued, “he didn’t see me. Before my death, I entrusted my daughter Eleonore to his brother, Blake, whom you also knew, I believe.”

“At my expense.”

“I heard about that,” she said. “Blake was a different man at that time, and he loved Eleanor deeply, like a father loves his daughter. My body hadn’t been completely destroyed by the pyre, and later I resurrected and fled. But a few years passed and I realised that I wasn’t ageing. Blake being the only one, to my knowledge, with powers quite similar to mine, I went to meet him. For Eleonore’s safety, I had promised him that I wouldn’t be part of her life. It had been many years since I had entrusted my daughter to him, and I learned that day that she had married his brother, who was several hundred years old. Blake was worried to know she was in the hands of Magnus, but he advised me not to approach him, at the risk of being discovered. A kind of aura emanated from me. Moreover, as a caste, Magnus would have either enlisted me, or killed me, or would have made me his mistress, because I inexorably attracted my fellow men, according to Blake. It’s also an ability that you inherited, much more powerful, if we are to believe your prowess at the Nave of Statues.”

My brother smiled. He liked this family scene, I could see that clearly, and it’s true that at this precise moment I would have liked my father to also be part of the picture.

“I probably also inherited it from Dad, since he’s from the same line. Perhaps the combination of your powers created what I am, a caste with an immeasurable power of attraction. What a plague! I would have preferred the gift of clairvoyance, it would have been more useful to me and brought fewer problems.”

“On the contrary, I had the feeling that it gave you a strength that no one today has in their possession.”

“It makes you unique,” said my brother.

“Except Carmichael, whose great-grandmother you are, if I understand correctly. The association of a Castellane with a Burton Race creates a real fairground attraction!”

“That’s how you talk about your husband!” Ethan chuckled.

“Since you voluntarily broke up my relationship by attempting suicide and revealing to me that he was aware of Olivia’s capture, yes, I’m talking about him in those terms.”

Isabelle looked at the horizon, as if her memories were slowly unfolding before her eyes. She picked up the thread of her story.

“When Magnus came to Blake’s castle with Eleanor, I spied on them from afar. Blake put me up, he did it a long time later too.”

“I never knew anything about that.”

“You would never have known everything that man had in mind. He was mysterious, but his love for my daughter was unmistakable. In the years that followed, we often went to Mortain. Stays during which I hid, but where it was possible for me to observe them. And it was during Eleonore’s second pregnancy that Magnus changed. He was convinced that Eleonore would be the mother of the children of the prophecy, which wanted a brother and a sister of blood to be at the origin of the destruction of the world or the Advent of the castes. A few months later, she ran away from the castle, heavily pregnant. But he soon found her. Mad with sadness, he begged her to stay, mad with anger, he summoned her to follow him. But she refused, and she used her powers against him. Hidden not far from there, I decided to intervene and measured myself against Magnus Burton Race. Eleonore didn’t know who I was, and I never had time to tell her. The fight was tough and fierce. Magnus and I used whatever was around in the hope that one of us could unseat the other, which would then give us time to land the killing blow on the first to flinch. And he was the first, because he suddenly stopped fighting. I took the opportunity to send him a tree trunk, right in the belly. He almost managed to dodge it, but was seriously injured. I then approached to give him the finishing blow, but I realised at that moment he was crying. His blood and his tears flowed on the ground. He didn’t move, and uttered a cry. An insane cry, which I still hear sometimes in my dreams. So I turned around and discovered the cause of his real pain. I collapsed beside him. My daughter and the baby she was carrying in her womb lay dead, killed during our confrontation.”

She paused. The tone of her voice was no more than a whisper.

“I didn’t have the heart to face Magnus anymore, and to see him in such grief was a fair enough punishment. I decided to leave. To go very far away. But before that, I waited to see if Eleonore would wake up from her death. After all, I had resurrected myself, so why not her? But she never woke up. A few days after her death, Egeria, who had been jealous of Eleonore since her marriage to the man she had loved for two centuries, reduced her to ashes, along with all my hopes and those of her husband, who never knew anything about it. Overwhelmed with pain, I failed to find the resources to take revenge. But my life was long, and I knew that one day the hour would come.”