HEART OF THE CHOSEN (CASTE BOOK 1)

Chapter 20

In the end, I chose a black skinny pants outfit, a gold-coloured top and matching Louboutin shoes. It was a perfect outfit for the mysterious reception that awaited me. After storing my clothes in the dressing room, I decided to go for a walk in the castle and, thereby, meet Eric. It was still daylight and I was curious to find out more about this place.

I headed down the hallway in the opposite direction from where we had come. I took care to lock the door of my room. I noticed an inscription engraved in the stone cut above the frame of the door: Eleonore. The other two doors further down the hall were named Elizabeth and Egeria. Three women’s names for royal suites, I immediately wondered about the past of these women. They must have been important to have these splendid apartments baptised with their first names. But now wasn’t the time to uncover obscure caste mysteries. There were so many puzzles to solve before we got to that. I went down the stairs at the end of the hall. According to the circular shape of the walls, I must have been in the turret of the north wing, not far from the main entrance. I emerged into a huge library. All the walls were lined with books, from floor to ceiling, except for the monumental fireplace whose crackling flames sounded like soft music in my ears. Sliding ladders allowed access to the most inaccessible works, and visibly the rarest, considering the covers eroded by time. On the vaulted ceiling, an enormous fresco in the Renaissance style dominated the whole. The place was amazing and exuded calm and the smell of old grimoires.

“So, it’s you who we call Everliegh?” called a male voice that made me jump.

“Yes,” I answered as I turned around to see where the person in question was.

“You’re all anyone talks about,” continued the stranger.

The voice came from one of the armchairs facing the fireplace. I approached but, as I advanced, my heart skipped a beat. Unfathomable fear twisted my stomach, and my hands were shaking frantically. My skull was flooded with searing pain. A figure in a white suit rose from the chair facing me. Long brown hair, slightly curly, swept over the shoulders of this stranger who must have measured about six feet. He turned around when I was now a few metres from him, trying in vain to control my senses. The second his hazel eyes met mine, and without my realising it, countless books were thrown violently across the large room, the ground seemed to shift under our feet. Then everything stopped. No more trembling, no more hot air whipping my neck, even the twinges in my brain had vanished, and an enormous weight was unloaded from my chest. I breathed calmly and felt incredibly invigorated by this unique experience. Unable to comprehend my sudden reaction, I stared at the young man standing in front of me. From his barely adult age, his determined eyes were well worth that of a man worn by the years. He too examined me from head to toe.

“Who are you?” I asked as the last traces of my nervousness were gone.

“I’m Ethan.”

“How do you know who I am?”

“Everyone here knows you,” he replied with a raised eyebrow, “and I felt you coming the minute you left your room. There’s only you living in the north wing.”

“Oh, good? So, I conclude that you can’t read my mind?”

“Indeed,” he said, inviting me with a wave of his hand to sit down on an armchair next to his. “Like you, Everliegh, I have the power to move objects by thought, among others…”

It was with a smile on my face that I sat down, still unable to understand what was the reason for this sudden enthusiasm to converse with this complete stranger. Ethan did the same and I could see that he had no book in his hands.

For a moment we didn’t exchange a single word. We watched the fire crackle in the hearth from another age. The image must have been unusual as I thought it would clash with the setting, but against all odds, I felt perfectly at ease here, in Ethan’s company.

“Are you invited to the reception tonight?”

“Yes,” he replied, his eyes expressionless.

“Am I dressed enough for this kind of evening?”

“You’re perfect.”

The firmness of his answer and his suddenly impetuous tone made me jump.

“Ethan, I think Carmichael is waiting for you,” Naomi’s annoying voice came from behind us.

We both stood up and I was surprised to see Naomi take a step back when she met my neighbour’s gaze. I instantly turned my head away and noticed Ethan’s angry expression. He distinctly had the same antagonism for her as I did, and I liked him all the more for it.

Naomi wore a red taffeta dress flared on the thighs with a huge black belt. Her light make-up and her chalky whiteness made the whole thing very glamorous. She regained control of herself and turned to me.

“I’ll be waiting for you in the next room, and by the way, Eric will join you there.”

With those words, she turned and left. Now alone, silence took hold of the library. I finally noticed all the books scattered on the floor of the room. However, I was relieved to see the older ones still in their place. Ethan still hadn’t taken off his seriously angry mask.

“So you find her as annoying as I do?” I ventured to ask him.

He turned his face towards me and smirked slightly.

“That’s an understatement.”

I burst out laughing. Maybe it was his age close to mine or the similarity of our powers that made me feel so close to him. Or did he just have a gift that finally allowed me to be natural and confident? Also, he had made no comment on the upset my visceral fear of meeting other caste had caused. I had never suspected how much it would affect me to meet them.

“I’ll put them all away,” he said as if he had read my mind.

I smiled at him and we sat back in our armchairs by the fire as if nothing had disturbed this moment.

Without any idea of the time spent in this place, I found it amusing to take advantage of Ethan’s presence to keep the girl who was openly flirting with Eric waiting.

“We should go,’ Ethan said suddenly.

“Oh! You think?”

Sudden anguish gripped my insides. I realised that in a few minutes I was going to be confronted by a horde of caste and that I would definitely see Thomas again. The speed with which the last twenty-four hours had passed had left me no time to consider the situation, while stress gripped my chest. My eyes immediately fell on my new friend.

“Ethan, would you mind coming with me to the reception?”

“If you wish,” he replied, without the slightest trace of emotion.

With a wave of his hand, he showed me the way to go and held out his arm. I grabbed it as we headed down the north wing hallway.

We could already hear a sort of tumult that echoed from where the guests were to be. The further we went, the more fear tormented me. On Ethan’s arm, however, I was able to find some relief.

“How often do you get together like this?”

“Enough,” he mumbled in his monotonous voice, “on the other hand, I’m rarely invited.”

“Why?”

“The caste, in general, don’t like me.”

“Even Carmichael?”

“Carmichael isn’t like the others,” he retorted as we arrived at the door indicated earlier by Naomi.

Ethan led the way and we descended an old, rough-hewn stone staircase where the light fixtures looked suspiciously like torches. The voices were getting clearer and clearer. Sentences and words stood out clearly to my ears but the subject of the discussion escaped me.

“We should never have allowed this infamy, Carmichael,” said a male voice I didn’t recognize.

“If things go wrong, we’ll have no way to control them!” a female voice exclaimed this time.

“Shut up!” ordered Carmichael firmly, his rocky tone unmistakable. “She’s coming.”

The ambient hubbub died down immediately. Ethan and I were in a kind of antechamber between the long corridor from which the staircase emerged and the room from which the voices came. As soon as we showed up, I felt a cold wind chilling my spine as an army of eyes were directed towards us. Some caste were seated while others remained standing, I could have sworn there was some sort of hierarchy between them. Strange fact: most of them were frozen with fear. Embarrassed, I looked around me, a way of keeping a semblance of composure. I wasn’t expecting a warm welcome, but still.

The place was a large circular room. According to the structure, it must have been the basement of the battlement tower. The gothic architecture and the lack of windows made me think of catacombs, especially since this place had much less restoration than all the other rooms. Here, time had done its job and gave me more the impression of having landed in another era. Pillars supported the vaults of the ceiling and convex cavities pierced the walls in a regular fashion. Only a singular door, the exact opposite of the entrance flanked by two caste, suggested a possibility of exit in the event of a trap. In the centre of the room was a monumental round table in solid wood whose carved patterns were concentrated in the middle to form a coat of arms: a snake coiling around a falcon. A buffet had been set up nearby, where a bewildering amount of food was displayed. Around the central table were about twenty large armchairs. At the end, four of them were lined up differently from the others, like thrones erected before their subjects. Only one was occupied by Carmichael while the others remained empty. He eyed me with the burning jade of his eyes.

“Everliegh, you are here in the Pomona room. Meet Salomon Perez, Eddy Monteiro and his wife Wanda…”

Carmichael introduced them to me, showing me, to his left, a tall Native American guy with long hair and a couple in their fifties whose wife had fiery red hair.

“… The three men you see there are Ishmael, Marcus and Joseph Van Duren.”

The Native American caste named Salomon had a pleasant face, unlike the others. In any case, he showed no sign of hostility. The couple, on the other hand, looked much less sympathetic and stared at me scrupulously. As for the three men, the features of their faces hinted at a family resemblance, and their belligerent expressions gave me shivers. The three of them wore a black suit over an ivory-coloured shirt, which perfectly emphasised their rather pleasant physiques. My gaze shifted to the other side of the table and I immediately recognized Conway whom I wasn’t surprised to see whispering with Naomi. Nearby, Eric was standing. He was staring at me with his unreadable eyes and seemed preoccupied with something serious enough for me to notice immediately. His gaze fell on the seat in front of him.

“Thomas!” I exclaimed, euphoric to see his sublime face again in the midst of all these strangers.

I immediately rushed toward him but Ethan stopped me by gripping my shoulder firmly.

“Wait,” he urged me.

I spun around and glared at him. He didn’t flinch but a few caste around us had taken a step back. I was dying of fear at the idea of meeting these people but now it was I who frightened them. I had once again fixed my hopeful eyes on my love, but I immediately understood Ethan’s gesture. Thomas didn’t look at me. He stared down at the empty table and tried to hide nervous tremors. He didn’t seem to have suffered any particular abuse, yet the way he crossed his hands, and the way he did everything to avoid my gaze, I knew he was aware of my presence. He just didn’t turn to me. My anger, quiet until then, awoke like the eruption of a volcano that had remained dormant for centuries. Months had passed, all that time writhing in worry, thinking about him, sometimes imagining the worst. I had given him everything, even my life, which he had, beyond measure, changed forever. So, I thought about the urge to crush him on the spot and my brain was already imploding in my skull. The ceiling began to spit dust as my anger grew, and the table began to wobble by itself. Ethan immediately withdrew his hand.

“Ethan, come sit in your seat!” Carmichael ordered.

Ethan went to sit in the middle of two empty chairs near the Native American caste and not far from Carmichael. The fact that he moved away from me gave me the feeling that a limb was torn off, but I had no time to think about it because an incendiary gust of wind fell on me.

At the time, I hadn’t recognized this feeling, but it had the merit of distracting me from my anger. A furtive thought made me realise why Ethan’s presence by my side was so strangely reassuring: he felt no attraction for me. He had never made the slightest equivocal gesture or the slightest allusion to demonstrate his desire. However, his powers proved to me that he was indeed a caste. Why else had Naomi been so frightened in his presence? The thing is, ever since he walked away from me, I was like a lamb surrounded by wolves.

A single glance at the caste made me understand the extent of the situation. The tension in the room was palpable. The three handsome suits were now looking at me with lustful eyes overflowing with envy. The woman named Wanda grabbed the hand of her husband who undressed me with his eyes. Even Eric gritted his teeth and avoided looking at me. The other caste, standing, fidgeted on the spot, some had even left the room. Ethan, meanwhile, was lounging in his seat as if the situation had escaped him. Yet the grin he wore showed that he was perfectly aware of what was going on: all the men in this room considered me the female with the tentacled pheromones. If only it hadn’t been reciprocated, I could have handled the situation, but the fact is that I was almost sweating under the boiling of their unhealthy attention. Conway and Naomi glared at me as my cheeks turned crimson. Amidst all this effusion on both sides, a limpid radiance from Carmichael stood out. It was as if invisible antennae pointed me in his direction and my body fought against an urge to get closer to him. This wasn’t the case with Thomas. He still hadn’t looked up at me and his hands were shaking more and more frantically. He looked mad with rage.

“Everyone relax!” Carmichael blurted out to the ebullient audience, “Ethan obviously had a reducing effect on her dispositions. Contain yourself. You make me ashamed!”

“I didn’t think she would be so powerful,” commented the caste named Salomon.

“I know!” replied Carmichael, who made it clear to everyone that I attracted him much more and that, consequently, it was forbidden to touch me.

Apparently, I was right, each pair of eyes had immediately landed on the central coat of arms of the table as a form of obedience. Thomas still hadn’t flinched. Either he didn’t understand where Carmichael was coming from, or he just didn’t care. I was definitely leaning towards the latter. Tired, I felt a deep disgust about his attitude. And it was Naomi who broke the silence first, as a spokesperson for the community.

“How will the Master Hand react when he finds out she’s here?”

“He’s not going to know, at least not for now,” Carmichael asserted firmly.

A chill invades the audience. Apparently, the members of the Order felt fear towards their Master Hand and the surprise of knowing that Carmichael wasn’t the only captain on board fueled my curiosity about him. I also wondered why it would interest this famous Master Hand to know I’m here. Eric snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Now that Thomas is with us, I think Everliegh and I should leave.”

Besides Ethan and Carmichael, all the caste fidgeted and started whispering. Carmichael called them to order and addressed Eric.

“You can’t go home,” Carmichael said.

“The three of us can take care of Gregory and his cronies,” retorted Eric.

Carmichael paused before answering her as if searching for words. For my part, I wondered if the idea of leaving this place would please me that much. To find what? Sam who betrayed my trust? Gregory, the man who gave me goosebumps. Not to mention Thomas whose distressing behaviour was difficult to judge. So why would I want this future? But the most important question: why was I considering living with the caste? My eyes lifted to Carmichael. He was staring at me as if he was reading me.

“There are two reasons why you must stay here,” he said under his breath. “The first is that Everliegh is wanted by the police.”

“What?!” I blurted, stunned.

“There’s been another particularly violent murder.”

“Who?” I said, terrified.

Olivia crossed my mind for a short moment.

“Her name was Sophia Chang. She was apparently a girl from your high school.”

“Wh… what? Oh uh…I can’t believe it,” I said, dejected as a part of me was happy that it wasn’t my best friend. “Why the hell are the police looking for me?”

“To tell the truth, your sudden disappearance has raised some questions. Cedric Fabre, the first to whom you revealed your powers is dead, you killed a guy in Gregory’s pay in the parking lot of the Panchak building, the train incident and now the death of this girl!”

“But... I thought you were trying to cover it up?”

“Indeed, but this young Inspector Carrere turns out to be more ambitious than expected and, the most annoying thing is that he has understood that something is wrong with you. I still don’t understand how, by the way.”

“Wouldn’t it be possible to take care of him?” suggested the Native American caste, horribly serious.

“No, that would be way too blatant now that he’s been scrambling to find Eve. There’s still a wanted poster against her, but I’m hopeful we’ll settle the case. Sam Gregory, her cousin, is on it.”

Hearing Carmichael talk about my adoptive father suddenly overwhelmed me with nostalgia but, above all, surprised me.

“But there’s another reason you had to stay. At least one of you anyway. Naomi is expecting a child. From Thomas.”

“Bastard!” shouted Thomas enraged, throwing himself at him.

Extraordinarily lucid despite this revelation, I stopped Thomas in his tracks with a simple wave of my hand and sent him flying in the opposite direction. Carmichael smiled as Eric raced towards me, Naomi stood up.

“Eve, please,” Eric implored me, “let him explain himself, don’t be too hasty.”

“Too hasty! She’s pregnant, that’s not enough for you!”

“Eve…” Thomas said, still dazed from the aftermath of his fall.

“Go to hell!”

“Who do you think you are…,” Naomi said standing up.

I sat the blond back down by force and sealed her mouth at the same time. She had no choice but to comply under the yoke of my mental strength and hateful eyes. No, but who did she think she was! How dare she even speak to me! I turned on my heels like a fury and headed for the exit.

“Eve, you have to stay,” Eric insisted. “You don’t know everything.”

“Sorry, these introductions can wait for my anger to pass. As for your brother and his little blond, tell them to stay far away from me.”

It was what you might call a sensational exit. I could already hear the buzz of voices commenting on the scene. Using my powers like that might not have been to the best effect, but right now I thought everyone in there got off lightly. Rage drove me up the stairs. I ran harder to get to my room, and once the door closed behind me, I burst into tears.