Dark Descent: The Arondight Codex - Book One by R Nicole (best books to read all time TXT) 📗

river, the orange and white shimmering through the rising mists.

I sat on the roof of the Sanctum, my feet dangling over the edge. Below, the empty street was dark, the industrialised laneway shimmered where it met the side of the building—that must be where the invisibility illusion kicked in.

“Are you sulking?”

The sound of Wilder’s voice grated against my raw heart and I winced. Humiliated wasn’t the right word to describe how I was feeling. I wasn’t sure there was a stronger word than that. Maybe I’d have to add an adjective to amplify the burning embarrassment at my failed romp through the city.

“Yes,” I hissed, angling my face towards the shadows. There was no use lying. I was wallowing big time.

I tensed as he sat beside me, a little closer than I’d like, his boots dangling over the edge. We sat in silence for a while, listening to the dull roar of the rumbling back and forth traffic. Sound echoed across the water, bringing the outside world to us, but our little pocket of London was isolated, even though we were in the centre of it all. Alone in a crowd—that was the curse of the Naturals, after all.

“You didn’t think I’d be smart enough to see your sleight of hand?” Wilder asked.

“You saw me swipe that arondight blade?”

He snorted. “Of course I did.”

I groaned and shrunk into myself. I knew I’d stuffed up and hearing it from Wilder made me feel even worse. It was news to me, but I hated that I’d disappointed him.

“Get over it,” he drawled.

He leaned back and fished in his pocket. A moment later, he pulled out something and set it on the ledge between us. A shock of purple acrylic hair made my eyebrows rise.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, picking up the troll doll. The last time I’d seen it was when I’d left it behind at the Tate.

“I followed you,” he said.

“That was like a month ago…”

“You didn’t cry.”

“No. I wanted to, but not out of self-pity or anything.” I sighed, stroking the troll’s hair into a point. “I’ve been kicked down a lot. Crying seemed pointless.”

“It is pointless.” There he went, handing out pointy passive insults again.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Having a heart-to-heart with Wilder wasn’t the most comforting thing in the world, especially when I knew I was probably going to get an epic knuckle wrapping from Greer and her cronies in the morning. “It’s just… I feel so powerless being stuck in here.”

“I know you want to find out why demons are targeting you, and get revenge for what happened to Jackson, but you won’t solve anything by picking fights with every random bottom dweller you come across. You’ll just get yourself possessed or worse.”

“There’s something worse than being possessed by a puff of black smoke?”

Wilder nodded. “Yeah, there is. It’s called death.”

His words conjured an image of my parents and I shivered. Sightless eyes were one thing, but when they belonged to your mum and dad? Stuff like that haunted people. It haunted me for sure. Now here I was, in the middle of something bigger and wilder than I’d ever imagined. Camelot, mythical swords, epic demon battles, knights, and magical women who lived in lakes… Yeah, it was wild all right.

“It wanted to know where Arondight was,” I said, somehow knowing I could trust Wilder. There was just something about him.

He tensed and glared at me. “Arondight? Are you sure?”

“Wilder, a demon was trying to lick my eyeball at the time. I remember every detail.” I jabbed a finger at my face, where the Infernal’s fingernails had dug into my skin.

“You’d be forgiven for hallucinating,” he quipped.

“It was traumatising. I’m an over-thinker. Traumatic experiences give me fodder for months. It asked me where Arondight was. The Arondight.”

Wilder looked troubled, but he didn’t voice his thoughts. At least not the ones I wanted to hear. “You shouldn’t have gone out there, but at least we know why those demons were stalking you,” he said.

I scoffed, “Dumb asses.”

“There must be some reason they think you know where it is, Purples.”

“Nuh-ah! Until you did your ninja shit with your sparky sword, I never knew what any of this was.”

Wilder rubbed his hand over his face. “Did you? Did you, really?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The memories you have of your parents’ death… That Balan wanted something.”

“You still think my parents knew where Arondight was?” My eyes widened.

“It’s possible.”

I looked out over the city and muttered, “Then why don’t I remember?”

“You were a child who went through a traumatic experience, Scarlett. You likely blocked out most of it and simply forgot the things you didn’t understand.”

“If I knew…” I sighed and rubbed my eyes. It wasn’t like I was keeping that part a secret. I genuinely didn’t know squat about the Natural’s magic sword.

Besides, Wilder had a lot of secrets, most of which I’d probably never know, but right now it was obvious he was keeping something important from me. He was all vague and deliberately giving me just enough to be satisfied. Seemed like he’d never met an overachieving over-thinker like me.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I demanded.

He grunted and shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.

“Wilder. This is my life we’re talking about. If you know something… well, I can take it.”

“You’re very intuitive, you know that?”

“Don’t make me shove you off the roof.”

He turned, picking up a strand of my hair. He was always doing that. What was so special about my weird highlights that he felt the need to keep touching me?

“Arondight had another name, actually it had many, but one was the Indigo Flame.” He met my gaze and dropped my hair.

“Indigo?” I frowned, then my mouth formed an ‘O’ shape. “Indigo as in purple…”

“I think you came into contact with Arondight, and it altered your Light.”

“Are you insane?”

“Only slightly,” he replied with a smirk. “Even then, it’s debatable.”

I rolled my eyes and turned towards the city,