Demon Bound: The Camelot Archive - Book One R Nicole (open ebook .txt) 📖

talked intently to one another. The glow of the fire radiated behind them, staving off the chill.

What was I supposed to say to them? An apology wasn’t going to be enough to fix the trouble I’d caused.

Sensing my presence, they looked up.

“Madeleine!” Maisy rose to her feet in shock and Trent’s dazed expression turned to a serious frown.

I stopped a few paces away, unsure.

Maisy ran at me and threw her arms around my neck. “When Trent told me you’d… I didn’t believe it.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, I glanced at Trent over her shoulder and he shrugged.

“There was a Balan demon on the hill,” I explained. “The same one who took me.”

Trent’s frown deepened.

“He was controlling everyone with some weird sigil carved into his chest,” I went on. “I had to kill him to sever the connection.”

Trent shook his head and grinned. “I knew I was right about you.”

Maisy pulled back and stared at me like the sun shone out of my rear end. “Wait… You killed a greater demon?”

“Just his body,” I said, the lie weighing heavily on my heart. “He’ll be back.”

“Still, that’s some serious shite, Mads,” Trent told me.

I let Maisy go and wiped away her tears. “I need to find Aiden and do some explaining. Have you seen him?”

“I heard he was at the castle looking for the Inquisitor,” she told me.

I frowned, another wave of dread rising. And here I was thinking it was all over. “Wilder still hasn’t come back?”

“No one’s seen him since he spoke to you,” Trent confirmed. “He went up to the castle and never came back.”

“Shite.” I turned towards Camelot.

“Madeleine?”

I hesitated at the sound of Maisy’s voice. “Yeah?”

“Are you back? I mean, are you…?”

“I’m not Dark,” I told them. “I’m…in between.”

There was nothing else I could explain, so I left them beside the warmth of the fire and returned to the city.

It was time to face the music.

* * *

I found Aiden inside the castle grounds. From here, I could see the rift in all its terrifying glory. The chasm opened before me, the pit so deep the bottom hid in shadow.

Camelot itself was a massive structure, its tallest tower maybe fifteen stories high, and the surrounding walls and grounds as large as the one-hundred-and-forty-hectare Hyde Park in London.

Once, it had likely been filled with lush gardens, pavilions, busy stables, bustling kitchens, and more. Now it was torn in half, its towers crumbling, its stone charred black, and dust and ash as far as the eye could see. Not even the passage of time had allowed nature to reclaim this place from the Dark.

Camelot was dead.

Turning my back on the chasm, I approached another pit. This one was fresher, having been dug during the night and all.

Aiden stood at the bottom, his hands pressed against the wall of a hidden structure just like the one he’d unearthed weeks before. From the wave of energy radiating from it, I assumed they were linked, except this time I didn’t feel sick. The energy seemed to harmonise within me, drawing me closer.

I skidded down the side of the hole and landed beside Aiden. He looked up at me, startled by my sudden appearance.

He blinked. “Madeleine?”

“Don’t look so surprised.” I held out my hand. “Let’s get you out of this hole, huh?”

Aiden coughed, dust and grit falling from his hair, and he grasped my hand. As our skin touched, his gaze flew to mine.

“Don’t give me that look,” I told him. “I’ll explain later.”

“What happened?”

“There was a greater demon controlling you,” I replied. “The same Balan who took me.”

“A Balan demon in Camelot?”

“I killed his body to sever the ritual. It was the only way to free you.”

“What a predicament.” He scratched his head. “Considering the chaos you’ve caused, I should probably arrest you or something.”

“I hope not,” I drawled. “I went to a lot of trouble to come back here.”

“Madeleine…you’re a hybrid now. That makes you unpredictable.”

“I’m only unpredictable because the Light doesn’t understand me, let alone how to control me with its list of Codex regulations.” I sighed and placed my hands on his shoulders. “You can feel what’s inside me, Aiden, and now I know who I’m supposed to be. I could have left and never returned, but here I am.”

“Light help me,” he muttered.

“Do you know that silver and red make pink?”

Aiden blinked in bewilderment. “Your Light is pink?”

“Kind of.” I made a face. “You know, I loathe pink.”

The air between us eased somewhat and I helped him scramble out of the hole he’d dug—pardon the pun.

“It was the strangest thing,” he murmured. “The last thing I remember was going to bed. Then I woke up in a ditch with a shovel in my hands.”

“Well, we knew the Dark was looking for something in Camelot.”

He tugged me towards another hole, this one closer to the rift. “I wonder…”

We stood on the edge of the crater, the wind whipping at our backs. The first rays of dawn had finally edged their way over the lip and fell upon the border of runes.

“It’s the entrance to an archive,” Aiden told me. “A repository of information and relics which date back thousands of years.”

My heart skipped a beat and I knew we’d just dodged a whole spray of bullets. Aiden believed it held the culmination of Camelot’s power.

A set of large, metallic double doors were set into the wall, etched with elaborate carvings. Aiden had disturbed the ground where he’d pushed his way in, but the rest looked as if it had just seen the light of day for the first time in centuries.

“After I woke, I went inside,” Aiden continued, stating the obvious. “And from what I can tell, it remains untouched by the Dark.”

“You know what this means, right?” I asked. “What they want is probably in there.”

“Come inside and see for yourself.”

Aiden held up his hand and melded a spark of Light into a small, round ball. Letting it go, it hovered between us, lighting our path into