Chapter 88 The Battle of The Shadow!

Chapter 88 The Battle of The Shadow!
Emilio POV

Each step was a refusal to surrender.

I chanted harder, calling the old forces to witness that I stood on my own ground. I reminded them of the offerings I had made, the promises I had kept, the blood I had given, the debts owed to me by things that had eaten well from my hand.

The door shook violently.
Then stopped.

From the other room came a sound so low I almost mistook it for the dying breath of the candle.

At first, I thought she was crying.

Then I heard the words.
Saintilia was speaking.
Her eyes closed.

Her voice moved through the house in a slow, steady murmur, soft enough to belong to sleep, but heavy enough to make the floor beneath me tighten. The words were not mine. They did not follow my rhythm, did not answer my spirits, did not bend to the power I had called into the room.

They came from somewhere else.
Somewhere deeper.

I stood still, listening, the knife still in my hand, my own chant caught behind my teeth.

Her body was lying in the dark, but something in her had risen.

The thing outside knew it too.
The door stopped shaking.
The walls stopped groaning.

Even the drums seemed to lose their place, as if the sound coming from Saintilia had reached into the night and confused the hand beating them.

I did not understand the words.
That was what disturbed me most.

I knew the old language of my own spirits. I knew the names men whispered over blood, rum, dirt, and flame. But this was not that. This was not bargaining. Not command. Not witchcraft as I knew it.

It was a warning.

And whatever had come to my door understood it better than I did.

For one breath, I felt the house no longer belonged to me alone.

The silence that followed was worse than the noise.

I raised the knife and drove it into the floor before the threshold.

“Leave,” I commanded.

The house exhaled.
The pressure broke all at once.

The drumming stumbled, lost its rhythm, and began to retreat into the distance. The scraping dragged itself away from the wall, slower now, no longer testing, no longer threatening, but wounded. Angry. Denied.

I stood there until the last sound faded into the trees.

Only then did I allow myself to breathe like a man again.

My thumb still bled. The candle had burned almost to nothing. The room stank of rum, grave dirt, smoke, and fear.

But the door remained closed.
The house remained mine.

But I could not move. Not yet. I was still dazed about what I have just witnessed.

I turned my head toward the place where Saintilia slept.

For a while, I only watched the darkness beyond the doorway, listening for her voice again. Nothing came. No chant. No whisper. No sign that the power that had risen through her had left any mark behind.

I went to her then, careful not to wake her.

She lay exactly as she had before, her body curled beneath the thin cloth, her face turned slightly toward the wall. Her breathing was soft and even. Peaceful, almost. As if nothing had happened. As if the thing that had spoken through her had folded itself back into her and gone to sleep.

I stood over her, unsettled by the calm of her face.

Whatever had answered the darkness was gone now or hiding.

I could not decide which thought disturbed me more.

When the first light touched the horizon, the sounds vanished as if they had never existed. The air cleared, but the warning remained.

And still, she told me it was none of my business.
Did she not understand?

She was my woman. Her pain was my pain. Her enemies were my enemies. What had been done to her had also been done against me. Yet she had the nerve to shut me out, to handle it alone, to deny me the satisfaction of being her avenger.

I swallowed my fury and buried it deep, where it burned and grew.

I said nothing.
I only watched her.

When I asked her if she heard anything during the night, she claimed that was the most calming rest she had in a very long time.

She gave no sign that she remembered the night. No fear crossed her face. No question left her mouth. No flicker of recognition showed in her eyes when I looked at her too closely.

If she knew what had risen from her sleeping body, she hid it well.

That should have relieved me that she really did not need my protection. Instead, it unsettled me.

I had wanted to protect her. I stood between the thing outside and her sleeping body, truly believed she survived because of me. I had cut my own flesh, called my spirits, marked my threshold, and fought to keep evil from crossing into my house.

Yet some part of her had answered with a force greater than mine.

And she stood before me in the morning, telling me it was none of my business, dismissing me as though I had not spent the night fighting for her.

The insult burned.
So did the truth.

She was not helpless. Not in the way I had believed. Not in the way I wanted her to be.

I waved her away and went to my room because I knew that if I opened my mouth, the words would come out like weapons.

She would learn in time that her battles were mine to fight.
Whether she wanted my protection or not.
Whether she needed it or not.

Then, slowly, the fire of my rage began to cool.
And behind it came shame.

Her words had struck something in me I did not want to face. For so long, I had feared that she loved Jacob. I had feared she had given him the part of herself I had waited so patiently for. But now I knew the truth.

The relief should have steadied me.
Instead, it opened a door in my mind I wished had stayed shut.

Jacob. The unfinished business between us must be resolver once and for all.

A memory returned to me, sharp and bitter. One night, after enough liquor had passed between us to loosen the old silence, I had spoken too freely. I had not confessed my desire for Saintilia outright, but I had said enough.

Maybe I mentioned how beautiful she had become.
Maybe I spoke of her with too much interest, too much care, too much hunger hidden beneath ordinary words.

A man did not always need to confess to betray himself.

Sometimes the eyes spoke before the tongue had the sense to stay quiet. Sometimes the body turned too quickly at the sound of a name. Sometimes silence itself became a confession when another man was wounded enough to listen for it.

And Jacob was still wounded even after many years. Even after he married someone else and built a new life. His watchful eyes must have detected something. Or heard what I tried not to say.