The Complete Chosen Trilogy (The Chosen #0)

by N. M. Santoski

  "No, sir, I have no idea what he's talking about."

  "So if we went to your room right now, we would not see a set of ransacked drawers?"

  "No, sir... Nolan is a slob, so it might look that way, but I would never violate his personal space."

  Jenkins held up a hand again to stop Nolan from exploding. "And if we ask Miss K'Oliu what happened?"

  "I would like to think she'd tell the truth, but with Nolan's mother and brother being so close to her, I can't be sure she wouldn't lie to save him."

  By the white spots evident in the corners of Jenkins' pursed mouth, it was obvious Angus had gone too far. "Mr. Kinnaird, I assure you, Leiani is a fine girl who would never dishonor herself by blatantly lying at a time like this. So, what shall we do with you? It's clearly a case of one word against another."

  Both teens began to argue, but Jenkins cut his eyes to Rebecca, who slammed her fist down on the desk to shut them up.

  "NOW," he said, a hint of anger creeping into his tone, "I believe Mr. Aeron has already made clear that he is not aware of his grandfather’s whereabouts?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And have you, as his roommate, seen any evidence to contradict this statement?"

  "No, sir."

  "Very well. Before you even ask,” he said with a scowl, “you will not have your rooms reassigned—you will learn to tolerate each other if it's the last thing I do. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, sir," they both mumbled this time, each glaring at the floor.

  "If you are brought into my office again for fighting, I will have no choice but to put you in the basement until June, as I promised. You are dismissed. Captain Selocrim, a word, if I may?"

  Nolan and Angus were unceremoniously dumped into the hallway and the door slammed shut behind them.

  "I don't know why you hate me so much," Nolan began in an undertone, "but if I ever catch you going through my things again--"

  "If you have nothing to hide, Aeron," Angus snarled, "then what do you care?"

  "That's not the point, Kinnaird! You can't just rifle through people's belongings!"

  "Let's just forget it," he snapped. "I hate you, we're never going to get along—let’s just ignore each other. Done?" He held out his hand, eyes narrowed.

  Nolan sighed and took it, shaking firmly. "I wish I know what I did, but.... done. Consider yourself invisible."

  Angus didn't even reply, just turned on his heel and stalked away.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The end of the summer at Caer Anglia was busy; it was over before almost anyone noticed. It was already mid-September by the time the first person inside tried to breach the baileys Nolan had so carefully constructed.

  Manas Warrington waited until almost two in the morning before sneaking out of his room, bag in hand. He took every precaution to keep from waking his roommate, but the Lord Younger Ignis was simply attracted to intrigue. The moment the door clicked shut, Pyrrhus was out of bed and off to follow him, with considerably more success at being stealthy.

  Pyrrhus trailed him all the way to the back of Caer Anglia, into the shrub rose garden. He watched with unconcealed amusement as Manas tried every way he could think of to breach the baileys, from tossing rocks to sliding dirt from underneath them, to absolutely no effect. Finally, with a muted growl, he took the most direct approach—simply climbing the wall and attempting to pass through bodily.

  Knowing what would happen if Manas touched the baileys, Pyrrhus lit the top of the wall on fire. Manas was an idiot, but seeing someone cut in half in front of him was not his idea of a great Saturday night. Besides—explaining it to Proctor Jenkins would be next to impossible. When the wall burst into flames, Manas slipped off the wall with a scream of shock and fell backwards into the rose bushes.

  The picture was so pathetic that Pyrrhus did the only thing he could do—he laughed out loud. Panicked, Manas began to thrash around in the bush, trying to locate the source of the noise.

  “Warrington, you are adorably stupid,” Pyrrhus said with a chuckle, stepping out fully into the moonlight.

  Manas looked relieved. “Pyrrhus, what are you doing out after curfew? And for the gods’ sake, help me out of these thorns!”

  Pyrrhus gave him a hand up and surveyed him with a bit of a smirk. “Pity, ruining that nice shirt with such a pointless gesture. I could ask you the same question."

  Manas finally managed to untangle his sweater from the last bush and stood tall. "I have to get to my father and tell him what's happening."

  "And you thought you'd just sneak out, hmm? That it would be that easy?"

  Manas frowned and looked down at the dirt, eye narrowed. “No.”

  “Do you really think your father doesn’t know what’s going on?”

  “Of course he knows... my father knows everything. It’s my perspective on it he doesn’t have.”

  Pyrrhus made an amused noise and crossed his arms. Manas noticed his skeptical look and immediately became defensive.

  “There’s more going on here than Aeron the elder raising the baileys,” he hissed. “I don’t have any proof, but I think Aeron himself raised them.”

  “Nolan? Haven’t you talked to Angus? He said there’s no sign of the Sword.”

  Manas rolled his eyes. “Are you serious? The Proctor is Aeron’s uncle... you really think they’re that stupid? That they’d just leave a precious heirloom that everyone in the world is looking for in his closet or under his bed?”

  For once, Manas was making complete sense.

  “Or,” Pyrrhus said, drawing out the vowel as his mind went into overdrive, “they’re telling the truth, and John Aeron raised the baileys with the Sword.”

  “Do you really think Captain Selocrim would be unable to find John Aeron if he were here? She’s hated him since she was five years old! She’s been tossing this place upside down for almost two months.”

  “She’ll never find them if Aeron raised them from the outside.”

  “The outside?” Manas snapped. He gestured at the ground, using the dirt to kick a rock up into his hand. He threw it with blistering speed at the bailey, which bounced it back so fast it took all of their reflexes to dive out of its path. The stone embedded itself in the small bush near the door, setting it ablaze with remnant Power. Pyrrhus called the fire to himself and extinguished the flames in the dirt under his boot, leaving only the blackened leaves and roses behind.

  In the silence, Manas’ quiet voice was scathing. “Do you think a bailey raised from the outside could rebound something that aggressively?”

  Pyrrhus kept his peace, rolling a single lick of flame between his fingers like a coin as he thought. When it became obvious he was not going to respond, Manas snorted and shoved away from the wall, heading back toward the door. Before he left, he turned back toward Pyrrhus for one last parting shot.

  “You’d better decide whose side you’re on. Siding against my father and the Council is to pick the losing side.”

  Pyrrhus waited until Manas’ stomping footsteps echoed away completely before allowing himself to relax. Of course, Manas was right. If John Aeron were anything like the stories his father told, he would not have been content with hiding for months in the building. He would have stormed in, metaphorical guns blazing, to retake control of his Council and his life. No, it was clear to anyone not completely out of his or her minds with panic that Nolan Aeron must be the new Swordsmith.

  Judging by the way the rest of them were acting, he guessed only four of them knew the truth. Even Leiani, savvy power player that she was, refused to really believe that bumbling Nolan Aeron was the most powerful man in the Western Hemisphere, if not the world.

  Without Nolan’s express confession, Pyrrhus would be content to sit back and watch the drama unfold. He would appear to most as a neutral, slightly eccentric Ignis user—an image he cultivated with utmost care. He would watch and wait.

  Even as he retreated to the sanctity of his basement hideaway for a long night of staring at
the ceiling, he caught himself thinking that, given a choice between following Manas and following Nolan, the race wasn’t even close.

  ***

  Two weeks after Pyrrhus and Manas had their nocturnal talk, Nolan headed down the dorm hallway. His mind was a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts. Leiani asked him to meet her in his room after dinner, and he was almost afraid to know what she wanted. He huffed at his own cowardice and headed for Gia and Leiani’s room instead of his own. He’d be early, but… if he was going to go, better to go now before he lost his nerve. Leiani had become more and more listless as their months at Caer Anglia progressed. Pyrrhus told him in confidence that she was going through what he called Sea Withdrawal: Her hair was completely black now, and dark circles were forming under her eyes as she lost a significant amount of weight. It killed him to see her like that, and it brought out a protective side he didn’t even know he had. If he could make her pain subside at all, he would do it without question.

  He knocked on their door and received no answer, but the door swung open at his touch. “Leiani?” he called, peeking in. The light was on, but the room was empty.

  “Hello?” he tried again. He stepped inside and peeked around.

  Behind him, Gia came in, dressed in sweats and a tank top, rubbing her head vigorously with a towel.

  “Hi, Gia,” he said, smiling.

  She shrieked in surprise and bolted back for the hallway, slamming the door as the towel dropped to the floor.

  “Who is that?” she shouted through the door.

  “It’s Nolan—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I was looking for Leiani, and the door was open…”

  She reopened the door after a moment of scuffling. Her hair was slicked back into its customary ponytail, her bangs pushed back behind her ears as she glared at him.

  “How about knocking?”

  “I did!” he defended himself. “I told you, the door was open!”

  She let out a big breath, her pulse still visibly thudding in her neck. “Well, you scared me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he offered sincerely.

  She hesitated for a moment, and then smiled. “Forgiven. Did you want to wait for Leiani? I think she’ll be back in a little while—she was with Kuriyami the last I heard.”

  “Sure,” he said, accepting the offered chair with good grace, watching as Gia scooped up the wet towel from the floor and tossed it into the hamper.

  “How have you been?” she asked after a moment of silence. “I haven’t seen much of you the past few months.”

  “Well, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Leiani, and you’ve been spending a lot of time with Angus,” he pointed out. Angus had taken to simply pretending he wasn’t there, and the girls were always at each other’s throats, if with a bit more subtlety than the boys.

  She nodded, taking the seat across the table from him and leaning on her elbows. “And you’re adjusting well?”

  “As well as can be expected, I think. I still get lost occasionally, but Pyrrhus has been a huge help with that. The claustrophobia is getting to me, but it’s getting to everyone else, too. How are you holding up?”

  “I’m okay.” She didn’t elaborate, and they once again fell into an awkward silence. She was studying his face with great interest, and when their eyes met, she stood so quickly her chair almost took a tumble.

  “Do you play chess?” she asked, reaching for a box tucked under her desk.

  “Haven’t played in a while, but yeah.”

  “Want to start a game while we wait for Leiani? No one else I know plays.”

  “Sure… I used to play with my grandfather all the time,” he said, watching as she opened the box and began to remove the pieces. They were carved from light and dark wood, and were all shaped like Zephyra. The Black Queen’s wings were wrapped around her entire body from head to toe, while the White Queen’s wings were spread so wide she practically nudged her King out of his square.

  “You can be white,” he offered automatically.

  “No!” she protested, picking up a pawn of each color and whisking them behind her back. She jumbled her hands for a moment and then held them out, the backs of her hands facing upward. “Choose.”

  He studied her face for a moment, and then tapped the back of her right hand twice with his finger. She turned her hand over and opened it to reveal the black pawn.

  “There! You go first anyway.”

  She made a face before setting up the board with lightning speed. “Ready?” she asked.

  “Yes, go ahead.”

  She moved a pawn forward two spaces. “So—what do you want to talk about?”

  He smiled. “Do you always talk during chess? It was my understanding that it’s a game that needs your full attention.”

  “I’m always talking,” she shrugged. “My mind never shuts off, I can’t help it. No changing the subject, though—pick something to talk about.”

  “Tell me about your family, then.”

  She grimaced. “Ugh, something else, please.”

  “Oh, no, you said to pick something, and I have,” he said with a smile, moving his own pawn up to meet hers.

  “Fair enough, I guess. Let’s see… I have my brother—who is Lord Zephyrus—my sister, and my sister-in-law.”

  “Your parents?”

  “My parents died when I was five. Nothing sinister—they were killed in a car accident. My brother, Arias, is over ten years older than I am, so he took over as our official guardian when he took the Council seat. My sister is almost two years younger than I am.”

  “And your sister-in-law?”

  For the first time since they started talking about her family, Gia smiled. “Shui? She’s amazing. She married my brother when I was eight—she was only thirteen, but the Dragon of the East Winds thought it would be best if he joined his family to ours.”

  “The Dragon of the East Winds?”

  “Oh, he’s the sub-Lord of Asia. He’s based in Hong Kong. They’re often lumped under Zephyrus when they’re talked about at all, and Lord Artifex has been talking a lot about uniting the countries again under one Council. I suppose Jun thought that a marriage would make that process easier.”

  “I guess that’s not true?”

  Gia shrugged. “Arias and Shui are not happy together. They have no children, and she confided in me that their barrenness is purposeful on her part. Arias is…” she hesitated for a moment, looking sad. “He’s a difficult person to live with—very bound up in tradition and honor and what’s appropriate.”

  “Is he hard on you?”

  “In every way he can be. I am his eldest sister, Lady Younger Zephyra until he has an heir of his own, and I am supposed to act accordingly.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “Clara is… torn. She loves me, but I think she loves my brother more. She respects him more. I have Shui, though, so it’s only fair.” She mustered a small smile. “Enough about my family, how about yours?”

  She realized almost immediately that she’d spoken without thinking and tried to take it back, but Nolan waved her apologies aside. “I started it. Go ahead.”

  Feeling awkward, she toyed with one of her knights, sliding it around the board until she finally asked, “Did you live alone?”

  “With my grandfather, but yes, we lived alone.”

  “What was it like where you lived?”

  “It was very quiet—we lived isolated from everyone else, for obvious reasons. I don’t think anyone even knew our house was there.”

  “What else…” Gia moved a bishop, frowning in thought. “What’s your favorite memory?”

  “I remember… when I was still a kid, my grandfather took me out in the backyard and we played catch. It was nice to see him so relaxed. I mean, it was still a teaching moment—when wasn’t it with him? He was trying to teach me about manipulating balls of plasma by showing me different throws with different balls—baseballs, soccer balls. For about an hour, though, I could forget th
at we were in hiding and just pretend to be a kid. Kicking up the leaves, diving for the balls as he tried to get them past me…”

  Gia put her hand on top of his, touched by the genuine hurt in his voice. “Do you miss your grandfather?”

  “Every day.”

  “Was he good to you?”

  “He’s the best man I’ve ever known.” Nolan took his hand away from hers and reached for a knight of his own.

  “How long ago did he pass away?”

  He froze, hand hovering over his piece. “Who told you he was dead?”

  Gia closed her eyes for a moment, horrified. She’d drawn that conclusion from seeing Nolan with the Sword on that first day, but she’d never said a word about it. When she opened her eyes, he was standing in front of her, face so pale his eyes seemed to be glowing. “Who told you he was dead?”

  “No one! I just assumed…”

  “Why would you assume that?”

  He seemed calmer, but he was still scaring her. She sighed and decided to just tell him the truth. “I was on the roof when you came in that day. I saw you.”

  Vague, but Nolan knew exactly what she meant. “You’ve known for over two months, and you haven’t said a word? To anyone?”

  Before she could do more than shake her head, the door opened again and Leiani came in, her hair pulled up in an attractive waterfall braid that effectively pulled it back far enough that she couldn’t see its color. “Nolan! You’re early!” she said, pleasantly surprised. Her glance took in the chessboard, their positions, and the tension in Nolan’s back in an instant. Her smile dropped. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not at all,” Gia answered for him, face ashen. “Nolan was looking for you, so we were just talking about some things that were new to both of us.”

  “You learn something new every day,” Nolan responded, eyes locked on Gia’s. The corner of his mouth quirked up, and he mouthed, “Later,” to her before facing Leiani and taking her by the hand. “You’re the person I was looking for, though, Leiani. What did you need?”

  “I wanted to talk to you privately,” she said with a larger smile than he’d seen in quite some time, leading him away. “Let’s go up to the deck.”