The Complete Chosen Trilogy (The Chosen #0)

by N. M. Santoski

  Before he could follow that train of thought much further, Alan emerged from the ocean, his hands empty. Nolan could see the drops of water racing off of him and making a break for the ocean from whence they came. By the time he reached them, he was completely dry.

  "Mother has taken the liberty of having dinner prepared for us, in Uncle Robert's honour," Leiani offered, leading the march back to the house. "I invite you all to join me."

  "We'd be honoured, my Lady Younger," Mara answered for them all.

  Keopelani was waiting for them in the hall, along with Azar. As Leiani and Alan led the way, Nolan reached out and took Gia’s hand again, squeezing it. “What is Azar doing here?” he hissed under his breath, but there wasn’t time for her to answer. The man in question was kissing Leiani on the cheek and shaking Alan’s hand, had an embrace for Mara, and was now stopping in front of them.

  “Lady Younger Zephyra,” he said with a bow, kissing her on the cheek. “My congratulations on your engagement. Arias must be keeping it close to his chest—I saw him not a week ago and he said nothing about it.”

  Gia smiled, though her grip on Nolan’s hand tightened slightly. “I look forward to bringing my fiancé home to meet my family at last.”

  “It’s a shame your relationship with my son didn’t work out.”

  A sharp-eyed Azar saw Nolan draw his eyebrows together for a moment before wiping his expression clean.

  Gia smiled and slid her hand up Nolan’s arm to tuck it into his elbow. “Pyrrhus and I will always be the closest of friends.”

  Azar finally turned to size up Nolan Aeron for the first time in close proximity. He had to admit, the boy looked regal in his electrified suit. “Nolan Aeron… I’ve heard a lot about you. You certainly make an entrance.”

  Nolan took a moment and concentrated, pulling his numina back from the suit and absorbing it. He held his hand out, his eyes challenging. “And I you, Azar.”

  Azar swallowed his surprise at the boy’s control, but his eyes widened a bit at the lack of honorific. The boy was playing the game aggressively, then. “You’ve been spending too much time with my son, I think.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  Azar finally took the offered hand and shook it once before letting go. “We’re holding up your uncle’s memorial feast. Please.” He led them into a large dining hall, clearly designed for many more people.

  As Nolan scanned the table for a seat, he noticed a man he’d never met seated at the far end, watching Leiani unabashedly as Alan led her to a seat as far from him as he could put her. Nolan filed away that bit of information for later as Gia put slight pressure on his arm, encouraging him to move.

  His mother was already taking her seat, and there were two seats open to her left. Nolan helped Gia sit, and then sat down between his fiancée and mother, plucking his napkin from his plate and dumping it into his lap.

  Finally, the dinner party was complete.

  Alan rose to his feet and picked up his glass of Riesling. “To Robert Jenkins—Aqua, uncle, brother, friend. Aqua vitae perpetua!”

  Nolan aped the Latin phrase as best he could, his wine glass in the air. He replaced it and picked up his water glass instead, and noticed Gia doing the same. Alcohol was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

  Keopelani seemed to be doing her best to flat out ignore Nolan and Gia’s presence in her Court. Alan, the same. Mara was their saving grace. She smoothly avoided topics that would lead to discomfort, instead asking innocuous questions about Nolan’s favourite things or pastimes, or asking Gia about trends in the literary world (another thing Nolan filed away for later discussion).

  The party itself seemed to be content to remain in their cliques, forcing through an uncomfortable situation as quickly and painlessly as possible.

  Of course, it couldn’t last.

  Unexpectedly, it was the unnamed guest who cracked the façade.

  “Do you really think the present situation is sustainable?” the man’s voice carried down the length of the table. “Really, the Swordsmith situation is ridiculous. Kill the bastard and let’s get someone worthwhile in there!”

  The room fell completely silent.

  Nolan pushed back his chair, scraping the legs along the marble with an audible screech and ignoring Gia’s frantic grasp.

  “Go ahead.”

  The man raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Kill me, if you think it’s that easy.” He channelled his inner Pyrrhus and raked an insolent glance along the place settings. “Plenty of knives on the table if you’re not man enough to go toe to toe.”

  The man laughed. “Honestly, Lady Aqua! Who is this man? Some sort of poor relation?”

  “I am Nolan Aeron, Lord Fulmen, Swordsmith of the Nine, and I call your bluff. Who are you?”

  The man went white under his California tan. Despite himself, Alan felt a small frisson of satisfaction at the look on Kale’s face.

  “This is Kale Davis—he and his family watch over our West Coast holdings,” Keopelani said, keeping her voice as level as possible.

  “Nolan, for the gods’ sake, sit down,” Mara hissed. “You’ve made your point… we haven’t even had soup yet!”

  Suddenly, Alan rose to his feet, breaking the tension as he put a hand to his pocket. “I need to take this—excuse me.” He rose from the table and stepped onto the terrace, waiting until he was out of sight of the other diners before he retrieved his silent phone.

  Two swipes of his finger, and Rebecca Selocrim’s phone was ringing almost five hours away.

  “Hello?”

  “He’s here.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  Alan swallowed the first sarcastic words that rose to his lips and settled for, “He is here, and the Lady Younger Zephyra with him.”

  “I’ll call the team. They can be there in one hour. Once they’re off, I’ll let Lord Zephyrus know that his sister is with the traitor. Stall them.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Don’t do your best, Aeron, do it.” With that, she hung up the phone.

  “You jumped up bitch,” he muttered, letting the screen go dark as he tucked it away. He reentered the room just as the servers were bringing the first soup course. Kale had moved away from Nolan and taken the seat on the other side of Leiani. Alan clenched his teeth, but took a deep breath and glued on a smile.

  “Everything okay?” Leiani asked, her eyes dark with worry. He leaned in and kissed her cheek as he retook his seat.

  “Yes—just some last minute plans.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t pursue it. Down at the other end of the table, Mara was now speaking a mile a minute about her brother to a clearly interested Nolan, who was soaking it all in as Gia watched them both.

  Formal dinners, especially those in memoriam, took time… time Alan was thankful to have. They crawled through the first courses, and Nolan was getting decidedly fidgety when they’d reached the hour mark and eaten nothing more substantial than salad and some sort of green soup. Leiani frowned as she noticed that Gia had to keep pressing her hand against his thigh to stop him from twitching his leg. From the way he jumped when she did so, Leiani assumed she was pinching him. After the third pinch, he took his attention away from his mother and glared at her, visibly irritated. In response, she simply smiled broadly. Leiani felt a dark twist of jealousy at the sight of that possessive smile, but took Alan’s hand in an attempt to keep it at bay.

  “So, Leiani,” Kale asked from her other side, distracting her. “Will you show me the sights here on the East Coast? You’ll never be bored with me, I’ll tell you that.” He glanced over Alan’s formal clothes with a bit of a smirk.

  Before she could answer, Alan shot back, “Oh, boredom is the least of her concerns. In fact--”

  With a sudden roar, the doors to the terrace blasted inward in a tornado of sand and glass.

  Nolan hit the floor almost immediately, grabbing Gia by the wris
t and pulling her below the table as the rest of the dinner guests screamed and shouted. As his knees touched the tile, he realized that Alan was already under the table, as well. Their eyes met for a moment, and Nolan frowned at the hint of desperation he saw there. Before he could do much of anything, Gia pulled her wrist against his grip and began to crawl under the extensive length of the table toward the hallway. He followed her, almost running face first into her shoes as she stopped suddenly, her face paling in the odd light.

  “There are Zephyra here!” she shouted over the roar. “I can’t stop the storm!”

  Shit.

  He leaned in closer to make sure she could hear him properly without shouting his intentions to the entire room. “It’s a trap, like we thought... And I think Alan knew about it. We’re going to have to fight our way out.”

  “Not that way,” she said, jerking her head toward the terrace windows. “We’re screwed with all that sand and water. We have to head for Pyrrhus.”

  Nolan nodded. “I’ll cover you—go!”

  She shoved one of the heavy wooden chairs into the legs of a commando standing in between the table and the hallway, taking advantage of his surprise to quickly take him out of the fight. In a moment she was on her feet and running, ignoring the abrasive sand and bits of glass whipping by. As he started to follow her, he felt a hand close around his ankle and drag him backwards. He lashed out with his other foot, feeling the crunch of cartilage and bone breaking in someone’s face as he made contact with his shoe. The hand loosened as he heard his brother cursing in pain, and he took advantage of the momentary reprieve to scramble to his feet and run.

  He caught up with Gia about halfway down the hall, a half circle of fallen guards around her.

  “Lady Younger, we don’t want to hurt you, but you must come with us!” one of the guards pleaded as she traded blows with him.

  Nolan snorted to himself even as he ran to back her up—didn’t the idiot see that he should be more worried about her hurting him?

  Nolan swiped at a guard with a handful of molten lightning and chanced a look toward Gia. She jabbed the guard still pleading with her in the throat and took advantage of his painful choking paralysis to send him to the floor. He grinned and pushed another out of his way, working toward the exit.

  "Gia!" he shouted, gesturing with his arm. Without another word, she understood. She hit the floor so abruptly that the two guards coming at her from opposite directions had no time to adjust and collided. Seeing his chance, Nolan blasted the remaining three with enough amperage to drop them where they stood. In two bounding strides, he was across the room as Gia clambered to her feet and met him on the run. They broke free of the compound heading away from the ocean and ran across the lawn toward the copse of trees where Pyrrhus sat waiting.

  One of Arias' Zephyra burst from behind the bushes and caught Gia by the back of her dress, tangling his fingers in her pendant’s chain in the process.

  "I got her!" he screamed, but that was as far as he got. Gia pivoted on her foot, ignoring the fact for a split second that this was a man she'd known her entire life, and kneed him in the solar plexus. He doubled over, taking her pendant with him, and Nolan covered her as she used a push of wild wind to tumble him to the rocks.

  "Go!" she screamed, and he turned to run the final few yards to the open car door.

  Pyrrhus hit the gas before they even closed the door, bumping down the rough terrain to the road below.

  A Jeep jolted down after them, full of numen attempting to slow them down. Nolan took a split second to be thankful that there were no Artifex with them, then slid behind Gia and slammed down on the button that opened the rear window.

  "What are you doing?!" Pyrrhus shouted over the sudden noise. “Careful with my car!”

  "The hell with your car, I’m buying us time!" He leaned his entire torso out of the car, far enough that Gia sat on his legs to keep him from hanging out further. He charged up the largest ball of plasma he could and let it fly.

  It hit the front of the Jeep with a crackling roar, destroying the front engine compartment and sending the truck tumbling to the side of the road, where it rolled to a stop as they kept going. Looking back, Gia could see their pursuers climbing from the wreck, shaken and bleeding... but alive. She caught a fleeting glimpse of Alan Aeron as he reached the doorway of the rear terrace, but he was too late to stop them.

  Alan slammed his right hand against the doorframe—his left was busy trying to stop the blood pouring from his nose—as he watched the car carrying his brother careen around a corner and out of sight. The vibrations knocked two paintings off the wall, but he barely glanced their way as he ran back to the main hall. There were guards down everywhere, just now beginning to get to their feet as he passed them.

  His entire focus was on his wife.

  She was sitting in a chair, face chalk-white as her mother and that thrice-damned Kale hovered over her. She'd been struck by something—her lip was shiny and swollen, slowly dripping blood into her lap as Kale dabbed haphazardly with the bottom of his shirt.

  As he reentered the room, Keopelani snapped her head around at the sound of his steps.

  "Alan Aeron, I call you into account!" she snapped.

  Everyone in the room froze—except Kale. He turned his body so his back was to Alan and he was blocking Leiani's view.

  Alan stood his ground, but his hands were trembling at the unbridled vitriol in Keopelani's voice. Playing up their connection would only hurt him now. Instead, he drew himself up straight and dropped to one knee, leaving the blood from his nose to drip in a steady stream onto the marble tile.

  "How have I offended you, my Lady?"

  "Do you not know? You, who are so... sharp?"

  Alan bit on his tongue hard enough to taste blood. He knew a trap when he heard one. Better to say nothing.

  "Did you know my daughter carries the Heir to my House?"

  Ah.

  "Yes, my Lady."

  "Did you willingly bring the fugitive Nolan Aeron into my domain without my knowledge?"

  His eyes flickered toward Leiani, but Kale's back was still in the way. "As you say, my Lady."

  Keopelani's eyes hardened. "Did you then inform Captain Selocrim’s commandos of the fugitive's location, thus exposing my Heir and hers to the threat of bodily harm?"

  "I would never expose—" Alan started.

  "Do not lie to me." Keopelani paced the floor in front of Leiani like a tiger, never taking her eyes off of Alan.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother sidle into the room as she assisted a limping guard to a seat.

  “Do you or do you not know the dictates of a woman carrying an Aqua heir? She must be closely monitored! She must not be exposed to stress! She must be cared for and kept from all danger!”

  Keopelani stopped and pointed an accusing finger at him as he ducked his head yet again, hiding the frustration and fear in his eyes. “I deem you an unfit protector for my bloodline. Alan Aeron, I cast you out.”

  “What?”

  “Mother, no!”

  “Keopelani, be reasonable—“

  Keo ignored them all—daughter, lover, and former son. “My decision is final. Return to the home of your forefathers. Take your mother with you. I will have no one by the name of Aeron in this Court.”

  Alan fought down the urge to tell her that her precious grandchild would be half-Aeron—attitude would get him nowhere. He rose to his feet and backed toward his mother, who was swaying on the spot, face chalk-white.

  "How long do we have to gather our things?"

  "Your belongings will be sent after you. Guards, escort the Aerons to the gate, please. Immediately."

  Leiani was reaching for him and crying, but Kale had slipped his arm around her under the pretense of keeping her calm and was holding her in the chair with an iron grip. Azar dared not interfere in official Aqua business, but he knew Keopelani was making a mistake... even if she didn't.

  Alan refused t
o flinch. He tucked his mother's hand into the crook of his elbow and tilted his chin up, sensing her do the same at his side. They would not leave in shame. They were Aerons, damn it! His cold look stopped the guards. "I've lived here all my life—I can certainly escort my mother to the car without your assistance, thank you."

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  "—and you should have seen Nolan!" Gia said with a grin as they drove north up I-95 exactly three miles over the speed limit. "He channeled you, I swear—even your father was impressed, even if he'd never admit it."

  The car swerved ever so slightly as Pyrrhus jerked the wheel, turning to stare at Gia. "My father was there?"

  "Didn't we tell you that? Yes, Azar was there. Why?"

  "We're not going back to the house."

  "What? Why the change in plan?" Nolan asked, leaning forward to stick his head between the front seats.

  "There's someone at Conleth I need you to meet, but I know if Azar was there, he'd never let that happen. There's always a risk that he'll fly up and beat us there, but I can go in first and scout things out."

  Nolan skipped over the oddity of Pyrrhus addressing his father by his first name and went right to the heart of the matter. "Who do I need to meet?"

  "My grandmother."

  Gia drew a sharp breath next to him, but Nolan was lost. "I'm sure she's a lovely woman, but what good will she do?"

  "My mother's mother, Marie McClellan, was Marie Aeron before her marriage to my grandfather."

  "Your grandmother is an Aeron? Like, a distant relation, or..."

  "Your aunt, if I remember my family trees correctly," Gia said. "Your father's sister."

  "What? Why am I just finding out about this now? We're cousins?"

  "Yes. Grandmarie disavowed the Aeron family after her marriage. Even so, she grew up as the daughter of a Swordsmith. She has information we need."

  "Then why haven't we gotten it before now?"

  "Azar slowly started to separate me from Grandmarie when my mother died, but once you and I became friends, he barred me from seeing her at all. We need to take our chance now."