Page 38 of Where The Devil Kneels

Silas’s composed facade cracks for the first time since I’ve known him. His shoulders stiffen, jaw tightening as he presses his palm against the wall, head bowed as if physically struck. In the lamplight, I can see the pulse jumping in his throat, the whitening of his knuckles as his fingers curl against the wood.

His whisper cuts through the static: “Without these walls…” He doesn’t finish. The mask slips. Gone is the shadow who moved through hidden corridors with silent certainty. In his place stands a man facing annihilation, not just of timber and stone, but of his reason for existing. His fingers trace the nearest photograph, a tremor betraying what his carefully composed face will not.

His honesty catches me off guard. I’ve always seen the estate as my inheritance, my duty, my safe place in a confusing world. But for Silas, it’s everything—his home, his purpose, and a mission handed down through his family.

Without thinking, I reach for his hand, my fingers sliding between his. His skin is warm, calloused from years of maintaining the house in secret. The simple touch sends electricity through both of us. I can feel it in the slight tremor that runs through his arm, see it in the way his eyes widen slightly as they meet mine.

“Whatever happens next, we face it together,” I tell him, the words carrying a weight I hadn’t planned but don’t regret. “This house protected me before I even knew it needed protection. Now it’s my turn.”

Something shifts in his expression, a softening around his eyes, a relaxing of the rigid control he maintains over every movement. His fingers tighten around mine, not with the practical guidance he used in the passages but with something more personal, more human.

“Together,” he echoes, the word sounding like a vow.

From somewhere above, glass shatters, followed by shouts and the heavy thud of furniture being overturned. The search is growing more destructive as dawn approaches and frustration mounts. Soon they’ll make good on Garrow’s order, and everything Silas has built, everything my ancestors established, will be consumed in flames meant to look like an accident.

Firelight starts to flicker through the cracks in the walls. I can’t tell if it’s from flashlights or the start of Garrow’s so-called electrical fault. Silas and I stand together in the centre of his hidden room, hands joined, ready to defend not just a house, but the sanctuary it has been for generations of quiet resistance.

Chapter twelve

Sanctuary and Siege

Thelightseepingthroughthe cracks grows brighter, painting Silas’s face in fragments of orange and shadow. “We need to move,” he whispers, squeezing my hand once before releasing it. His fingers find another hidden panel. This house has more secret doors than solid walls, I swear, and suddenly we’re slipping through an opening that wasn’t there seconds ago, the observatory disappearing behind us like a dream I might have imagined.

This passage is narrower than the others, barely wider than my shoulders. The walls press in from both sides: brick on one side, the back of the wood panelling on the other. Every breath fills my lungs with decades of undisturbed dust. My nostrils burn with another sneeze.

“Hold it,” Silas whispers, accurately reading my expression even in the dim glow of his penlight. “Breathe through your sleeve.”

I press my face into the crook of my elbow, willing the sneeze away as Silas guides me forward. His body moves with that eerie, silent grace, like a man who learned to walk without making a sound before he learned to talk. The contrast with my clumsy stumbling would be embarrassing if I had any mental space left for pride.

Above us, heavy boots thud across floorboards, followed by the crash of something expensive being knocked over. My grandmother’s cherry wood sideboard, probably. I flinch at each new sound, drawers yanked open, cabinet doors slammed, Garrow’s voice snapping orders like a ringmaster with a particularlyvicious whip.

“Where’s the kerosene?” someone asks, the words muffled but distinct enough to send ice water through my veins.

“East wing utility closet,” comes the reply. “Chief said wait for his signal.”

Silas freezes mid-step, his shoulders going rigid. The passage narrows further, forcing him to angle his body to the side to continue. I mimic his movements, pressing myself against the wall to squeeze through. My chest brushes against his back, and I feel his breath catch, a tiny hitch that would be imperceptible if we weren’t essentially sharing the same sliver of air.

“Sorry,” I murmur, trying to create impossible space between us.

“It’s—” He doesn’t finish the thought, just continues forward, his movements suddenly more mechanical, less fluid.

We turn a corner where the passage drops in height, forcing us to crouch. A massive cobweb catches in my hair, clinging like ghostly fingers. I stifle a yelp, batting frantically at my head.

“Here,” Silas whispers, turning back. His hand lifts toward my face, hovers for a second, then carefully extracts the web from my hair. His fingers tremble slightly, the first real indication I’ve seen that his perpetual calm might be a carefully maintained facade rather than his natural state. “These upper passages aren’t used as frequently.”

“Unlike the lower ones?” I ask, desperate for any conversation to distract from the sounds of destruction above.

He nods, resuming our descent. “These were built later. The original tunnels are deeper, older.” His voice comes in measured whispers, timed between our footsteps and the sounds overhead. “The estate was a station on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. My great-great-grandfather expanded the existing tunnels, added these vertical connections to create a complete internal network.”

A particularly loud crash overhead makes me jump, my shoulder bumping hard against his. His hand instinctively steadies me, fingers curling around my upper arm before quickly releasing, like my skin burns him.

“How many generations of your family have lived inside these walls?” I ask, trying to imagine growing up in darkness, learning to move through hidden arteries of a house that officially wasn’t yours.

“Five,” he answers, pausing at a junction where three passages converge. He cocks his head, listening to something I can’t hear before choosing the leftmost path. “Though I’m the first to live exclusively within them. My father still maintained appearances of normalcy and had a public identity. When things… escalated with Garrow’s father, visibility became too dangerous.”

We descend a set of narrow stairs, each step worn smooth in the centre from generations of careful feet. I try to track our path, left turn, twelve steps down, right turn, twenty paces straight, but the network is too complex, the sameness of rough brick and wooden supports making it impossible to create a mental map. Silas navigates with the unconscious ease of someone walking through their childhood bedroom in the dark, which I suppose is exactly what he’s doing.

The quality of sound changes as we descend, the searchers’ movements becoming more distant while the construction of the passages themselves transforms. Newer wood and brick give way to older stone, the temperature dropping noticeably with each turn downward. My skin pebbles with goosebumps, breath forming tiny clouds in front of my face.