“If your faith is that weak,” Mihály’s voice held needles, “then I’ll show you.”

Ilan’s lip curled. Faith didn’t mean believing every heresy that crossed an Izir’s mind, or giving witness to it. But the part of him that had been a child shaken by stories of miracles, who’d lived his life in pursuit of that unknowable perfection, still craved. “Please do.”

Mihály stretched and cracked his knuckles. “There’s a cat around here somewhere, if she hasn’t died...”

“No!” Csilla jumped upright, gathered feathers and wood-stiff mice falling around her feet. “I fed her. You’re not killing her.”

Her protests were comical and brave.

Mihály put a hand on her head, a mocking benediction. “One meal wouldn’t have made much difference to the poor thing. It was kind of you, but not helpful.”

“Well the cat isn’t here,” Ilan said as Csilla’s lip trembled, “but there are a fair number of rabbits in the woods.” The snow was half-gone after the brighter past days, to where it was impossible to tell tracks from melt holes, but there would be plenty of game out to nibble on the green poking through. Twigs snapped and leaves rustled as small things had jumped away from their approach. The forest was alive and waking.

Mihály scratched his beard. “True enough, but I’m not very good at hunting unless the thing is already half-dead.”

No surprise, as he wasn’t even good at being quiet. Ilan made a quick inventory of what was strewn about. The mess of stained cloth looked the most promising, and he picked up enough to construct a sling. “Luckily, I am.”

Good, but out of practice. His first shot scattered dirt and roots, and the second struck too true, the rabbit dead before it could try to run. He took a few practice swings and said a prayer to guide his aim as scrubby leaves shook. Rabbit or grouse or vole— hopefully it was something he could leave alive enough to see what the Izir would do with it.

The heft of the rock and the rhythm were a rare nostalgia. His mother had taught him when he was old enough to crave the excitement of a hunt, too young to be trusted with a bow, and for years he and his littlest sister had taken the place of their hounds as the champions of the gardens. The cooks and furrier had always indulged them by making their catch useful.

He stretched out his legs, a twinge in his lower back. Crouching for hours hadn’t felt this bad when he was eleven.

The next launch hit true. The rock cracked the creature’s back and it cried out with a stomach-churning bleat, its front legs grasping for useless purchase as it realized it couldn’t run. He picked it up by its scruff, still screaming, and carried it inside where Mihály had turned his examination table into an altar, laying his own coat down and putting a small dish on it. Csilla gasped and reached out for it, but he elbowed her away. He’d offered up his own hands for this stain.

“Took you long enough,” Mihály said, propping a hand on the table. Ilan squeezed the slingshot. The Izir’s skin would look quite nice with a few round bruises.

The creature had turned trembling and glassy-eyed in shock. Ilan set it on the table, and Mihály looked between the pair of them. “Who wants to give me blood?”

“You do it,” Ilan said before Csilla could volunteer. Her palms were together, fingertips against her lips.

“Hurry up,” she said, voice stiff. “Don’t let him suffer.”

Mihály made a quick slice on the pad of his finger, hissing and cursing all the while. He squeezed out three fat beads of red onto the clay surface.

Then he cut the rabbit's throat. Fresh blood pooled on his jacket, but he held his hand cupped, around something Ilan couldn’t see. “Come close,” Mihály whispered, his voice urgent and deep. He placed his hand over the dish, then let it fall back to his side.

There was a new tint to the Izir’s blood, and for the briefest second, it pulsed, struggling for fresh life. The droplets rolled then stilled, dying a second death.

He’d moved a soul.

The bastard wasn’t lying.

Csilla’s lips were slightly parted, breath shallow, her large eyes lit with warring disgust and reverence. Ilan fought the urge to step in front of her and block the wretched sight, cutting off whatever hope it had ignited.

Mihály looked up, his brilliant smile back. “There, now you’ve seen it. A little bit of blood, a little bit of soul.”

Ilan made a gesture over the blood, warding it against dark uses. He wasn’t entirely sure that what he’d just seen wasn’t dark. “That’s...”

“Shadow work?” Mihály’s tone was obnoxiously teasing. He was breathless, elated, intoxicated by his own success. “You just saw a miracle, and you’re going to complain?”

“I’m…” Not complaining. Concerned.

“I know you want to kill the man.”Mihály continued. “Do you really care how much of his blood gets spilled if you’re the one to do it? If it doesn’t work at least we’ll have taken a murderer off the streets. And if it does, Csilla gets her blessing.”

The open hope in Csilla’s eyes was painful in its sincerity, an ember to be smothered before the blaze took the whole house down.

“You’ll give her a soul that stained? She’ll have to work it off the rest of her life.”

Csilla only lit more brightly at that, and he looked back to Mihály, far easier to maintain the proper disdain in his tone.

“I’ve got a soul,” Mihály sniffed.

“You’ve got a soul.” Ilan repeated the words, eyes darting around the dim room. He wasn’t a child grasping his mark against ghosts. He still wanted to.

“Not here,” Mihály said. “But one close to me, one I know will welcome a second chance.” He smiled at Csilla in a way that could have been mistaken for warm if Ilan weren’t so used to looking for sin. There was avarice behind his gentle touches, and Csilla wasn’t aware. Maybe even Mihály wasn’t aware. The worst sort of people wanted nothing more than to think of themselves as good.

Csilla stiffened, tilting her head. Maybe she was more aware than he gave her credit for. He could push again if it would help wake her from whatever thrall Mihály held. “Is this why you’ve been preaching that there can still be form beyond death? Trying to make yourself feel better about your own ghosts?”

The Izir’s handsome face sharpened into something fierce. “I think everyone has the right to know that what is dead is not necessarily lost. There’s precedent. Angyalka. Rozalia.” He spoke with too much fire for it to be beautiful.

“Angyalka never fully died, and Rozalia was the lover of an actual angel. Your theology is rather self-serving.” Miracles were miracles because they were rare.

“And yours is far too narrow. Csilla will be quite comfortable, don't worry for her. I'm seeing to that." He reached out, a finger gliding along the cream lace at her neckline.

She’d gone pale, and Ilan raised an eyebrow as her lips parted, closed, then tried again. She pulled at her collar like it choked her.

“Csilla? Are you alright?” Mihály ran a hand over her head again, a master being gentle with a pet.

“I don’t feel well,” she said, not looking at either of them. “I’d like to go back.”

The first sensible thing that had been said here, really. And she did look incredibly pale. As pale as the bled corpses, marked with words to erase everything holy.

She just liked that he was divine.

Kovacs Lili. And then the server at the club, killed only a few feet from where Mihály had passed.

The Izir had death among his followers and death in his secret home. If he knew more, that thread of connection could lead back to the source.

Ilan stepped back from the table, resisting the urge to yank Csilla behind him. But she had made her own choice even after seeing all of this.

"Well, Inquisitor?" Mihály asked. "Will you help us?"

He should ask to pray on it, to take it to a higher power. But it was a struggle to conjure images of righteous saints and not shaking blood and screaming rabbits. The draft on the back of his neck felt too much like ghostly fingers, the settling sighs of old wood like something unseen breathing in the room. The Izir didn't even seem to understand the horror of what he was saying. A soul stuck to this plane wasn't some academic curiosity: it was a person's very essence being tortured.

And there was Csilla, the same age as Lili, just as enraptured. She hadn't asked to be saved. Hadn't asked for anything except that he'd listen. And yet there she was, alone as an untethered boat in a storm. Eyes on him even as she shook, as if he were a light on the shore.