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

Greer smiled, her impossible beauty masking her underlying emotions. “Don’t fret, Scarlett,” she said. “Brax, Aldrich, and I are investigating the matter. There’s nothing to worry about.”

I didn’t believe her for one second, but I was just the new kid, and I was now on probation to boot.

“Before you leave, I have a gift for you.”

“I thought I was in trouble,” I drawled. “Now I get presents?”

Greer crossed the room to a table I hadn’t noticed before and picked up a black book. She smoothed her palm over the cover as if she was blessing the contents. When she stood in front of the Codex once more, she handed the tome to me.

“If you’re to understand our ways completely, then you should have your own Codex.”

Taking the book from her, I opened it and frowned. It wasn’t the same as the original in the case, but Wilder had told me it contained the complete history of the Naturals after the fall of Camelot. There was no ebb of Light fused within its pages, it just had that new book smell.

I glanced over the passage I’d opened the book to. Arthur sent the twelve Naturals forth in search of Arondight. Lancelot rode south, for he’d held the blade before. Galahad rode north, his blood singing him a different story. Another omen.

I caressed my thumb over the leather cover and snapped the book shut.

“Thank you,” I said, “for not kicking me out of the Sanctum.”

“Not on a first offence,” Greer replied. “Though, I sincerely hope there isn’t a next time, Scarlett.”

I nodded, holding the book close. I studied the Codex—the real Codex—and felt an urge to go flip through its pages. Wilder told me since Greer was the protector, she was the only one who could read from it, let alone touch the thing. Still, the more I focused, the more I was drawn towards it.

The Codex… it… Was it calling me?

“One day,” Greer said, studying me closely. “Perhaps you will look upon it when you understand.”

I looked at the stairs, the Light in the room starting to weigh heavily on my shoulders. “Am I dismissed?”

She nodded.

Clutching my copy of the Codex, I clattered down the stairs, a strange sensation beating in my heart.

18

I didn’t go back to the gym straight away.

Clutching the copy of the Codex Greer had given me, I wandered through the hallways. I hadn’t been kicked out, but I didn’t feel any better about what had happened. No, I felt worse.

Stopping in front of a marble sculpture of the Lady of the Lake, I sighed. Jackson was mad at me, Wilder’s opinion wasn’t much better, Romy and Martin probably thought I was a nightmare, and that wasn’t even counting all the other things wrong with me. The only common denominator in all of this mess was Scarlett Ravenwood.

Opening my copy of the Codex, I flipped through the pages. Greer was always consulting the original, maybe it could help me make sense of everything. Understanding what the Naturals went through at the cataclysm might be a good place to begin.

Scanning the blocks of text, I was surprised at what it revealed. I kind of expected the Codex to be like the Bible, full of verses and metaphoric language, but it was like reading a non-fiction book, complete with pictures.

Hand-drawn images of Naturals in various scenes were laced amongst the text. Some pages appeared to be Medieval in design, then evolved through the ages—Renaissance, Impressionist, Art Deco. Checking the last few pages, they all ended sometime around the 1940s. Nothing since.

The Codex contained eyewitness accounts, discoveries, personal struggles, and everything in between. How did Greer consult this? It was like one giant logbook and without the Light the original emitted, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. History wasn’t my best subject at school, even though I knew humanity could learn a lot from their past mistakes. Teachers always wanted me to memorise dates, but numbers and I didn’t mix.

Turning back to the first page, I read, We were born out of the ashes of Camelot… It seemed like a lot to live up to.

I snapped the book closed with a frustrated sigh and glanced up at the blank marble eyes of the Lady of the Lake. She stared back at me, her stone arm lifting a stone Arondight towards the ceiling. I wondered if she ever felt this rotten.

The dull sound of people talking echoed down the hallway and I turned. A group of Naturals rounded the corner, their black uniforms strange against the refined manor house backdrop of the Sanctum. Recognising Romy amongst them, I swallowed hard.

They were laughing about something, and for a moment I thought it might’ve been gossip about last night, but I shook my head. Best not to jump to conclusions.

Romy’s expression turned sour when she saw me, and I shuffled from foot to foot. The other Naturals glanced at me and kept walking, but she hung back, her usual friendly demeanour nowhere to be found.

“Romy, I…” I trailed off, knowing anything I said was going to be lame to the extreme.

“You disrespected everything the Naturals stand for,” she said, staring at me with hard eyes. “We don’t endanger others, and we especially don’t allow our personal feelings to cloud our mission.”

“I didn’t expect… I didn’t…” I trailed off feeling like I was a five-year-old with a trembling bottom lip, not a twenty-six-year-old woman who should be trying to make up for her massive cock up.

“Look at it this way, Scarlett. There are so few of us left, that even the loss of one life grossly tips the balance towards the Darkness. If there’s not enough of us left to fight, then the demons win and our struggle has been for nothing.”

I lowered my head, my cheeks flaming.

“Read that,” she said, gesturing to the Codex. “You might learn something about camaraderie.”

“Romy! Are you coming or what?”

She glanced down the hall as a Natural I