“What in creation...” Mihály took a strand of her hair and curled it around his finger, where it became a shining cord. “How?” The word was half whisper, half prayer. He touched her hair, her lips, her neck, leaving a ghostly trail of brilliance as she shook.

“Find Ilan,” she whispered again, staring at the silver glowing in her fingernails. “Quickly.”

29

Ilan

The fire had been smothered save for a few smoldering heaps still being beaten out. The majority of the clergy had moved from the broken church to other homes opened to them by the citizens. It gave him room to hunt.

The stone buildings and the stable were fine, though Vihar had kicked a wall in panic and his coat was soaked through, and the dog whined with strained barks. It seemed a smart choice to take the hound while wandering a drafty and empty cathedral. There were traces of chemicals in the smoldering remains of the granary, on the stone outside the chapter house, in the gardens beds that had yet to be prepared and would now grow poison in the upcoming year. Whoever had done this had known where there were cracks in the church. A cuckoo in the nest of sparrows.

He rubbed a further spill of snow-white grains between his fingers. This was someone's violent science, not magic.

Faces of acolytes, priests, and elders flitted through his mind, each a potential enemy. Even when they had the glass, it could only tell them who had sinned, not the nature of the crime. Priests gave in to Shadow like anyone else, were punished by him like anyone else. But of all the ones he'd ever struck, none seemed to hate the church this much. Even those who only turned to Asten's house to escape abuse or poverty were grateful for what they'd received. They still attended service days, painted themselves in Arany's gold.

No one watched them now. If the union she died to bless was now corrupted, the eyes of the church dark, there were no more blessings on the gates. Another shadow war would come on them as things woke from long sleep.

The church itself was empty. Ilan's thoughts seemed to echo in the space meant for hundreds, now only him and his dog and a few corpses outside. If their enemies had wanted them weak, they'd gotten it; the glass was dark. Arany's statue was nothing but decoration, no more miraculous than the human-wrought iron of the gates.

They hadn't just wanted them weak. They wanted them out. And the smell of dead ash would more than cover any demons. The realization clicked with a hyper-awareness, every creaking beam and gust blowing through cracked windows possibly an enemy.

The dog stopped his sniffling hunt, a low whine in his throat as he bristled.

"What is it?" There were no footsteps echoing, no voices. They were alone, not even ghosts. Anyone who died here would have immediately passed to brilliance.

The dogs scratched at the wall and whined again.

"Hm?" He put a hand on the stone, searching for any irregularities that would speak to hidden passages. "I hope you aren't smelling one of the cats." They hadn't seen a single cat, fortunately. Cats knew to get out at the first hint of trouble. Csilla would have been pleased.

He didn't need to think about her right now.

His fingertips caught a small indention, shallow for fingertips to grip. To the eye it didn't look any different than the pattern of weathering across the rest of the wall.

The door retracted and slid scant inches into the section of stone behind it, wide enough for him to squeeze into if he pressed himself flat and put his back to the wall. The dog stuck his nose in expectantly, squirming around Ilan's legs.

"Back." He didn't have a candle on him, but far down was pale wavering yellow, tiny flames in a cavernous dark. The angle suggested stairs, and the dark meant being unable to see if any were broken or missing altogether, perhaps intentionally. The Church protected what belonged to it, but if their arsonist was one of them, they might know enough to use one of these secret pockets of stone.

"Stay." He held a hand out to the dog, who didn't seem to understand, and whined at the chiding tone, whined louder when Ilan shoved the door back to no more than a crack with a little black nose pushed into it. He wouldn't risk more than his own neck. Besides, if he died down there the dog could show where his own corpse had ended up.

With a hand on the wall, he moved towards the tiny glow, enveloped by stale air and incense.

Incense would be a strange addition to a room for plotting treason unless one was trying to cover up the scent of something dangerous or rotten. With every step closer the light intensified until he came to the source: a smaller room, painted in gold, with two half-used up candles on either side of a bed of tattered white silk.

In that bed, a corpse in shambles. Bones burst from darkened and leathery skin, a caved-in mouth gave her the look of choking on her own teeth. Bits of still-bright blonde hair clung to a mottled skull and twisted around a crown of square-cut jewels, and a cramped hand clutched the dusty brown stalks of what were no doubt once flowers.

Graced Rozalia.

He had never doubted her miracle but had always privately thought the tale of her entombment was fanciful. And yet here was a tomb.

Rozalia was said to be proof of the perfection past the ether, the saint who came back unmarred and lived a hundred years never aging a day more, only put into hiding when worshipers couldn't resist taking bits of her hair and dress and in one case, several toes and part of her ear. The saint that helped Mihály feel like there was some truth to the idea that he could have his lover back.

He lifted the edge of the whisper of old fabric hanging across her legs. Her toes were gone, and the old wound was blackening with mottled gangrene.

Another miracle collapsed. Rozalia decaying, Arany dry. They really had been abandoned. He'd given it his best effort, kept what he still regarded as a perfect balance of virtues, given the church everything, and it hadn't been enough. Even being right hadn't been enough. They were all as inconsequential to the divine as Csilla now.

Ilan sank beside the body's altar and rested his head against the faded and dusty rose silk of her draping shroud, torn between curses and wild laughter. His entire life and purpose had come to nothing but mangled bodies and failure, and he was still thinking about Csilla, still stinging that she'd clung to the Izir. The hurt was embarrassing, even if the only witness was a rotting saint.

A loud bark echoed down the steps and then the air shivered with a growl. Ilan ran upstairs without care for the broken steps, cursing every time he missed one, cursing louder as his shoulders ached to pull the stone enough to slip back out.

It was a strange relief to see Mihály there, and not some further horror.

"Ilan."

Mihály's deep voice echoed in the dim and filtered light, a soft note to it. Awe.

The Izir had never seemed awed by anything but himself. Certainly not a burned church whose holiness had been stripped. More certainly not Ilan.

He tried to call up a sharp tone, but his nose was still full of the stink of incense and decay, the fight in him torn away like the peeling flesh left by Rozalia's venerated toes. There was little else the Izir could do to hurt or save the church now. "What do you want?"

"It's not what I want. It's Csilla."

"She's here?" The want to see her hit like an unexpected breeze on a burning day. He tamped it down. "For Ágnes ?"

"Yes, but..." He gestured, the gesture loose and helpless. "Come to the sanctuary. She wants to see you."

"She's sick of you, then?"

The Izir snorted. "Come and see, and I think even you will be out of snide commentary."

He swallowed. He wanted to see her to, but that had to be set aside. "Mihály, we've lost the miracles." There would be no more banishing demons, no matter what they did. Shadow would crawl through the population soul by soul, corrupting them. When the physical vessels finally gave up, they wouldn't be allowed to join to greater peace. They would be in anguish for eternity.

Their only chance now was to catch the conspirators and hope they knew a way to reverse the magic, or trust that the Incarnate would arrive in time to guide them back to the light. Neither of those things had panned out terribly well so far.

"We've lost the old miracles," Mihály said, reverence still illuminating his voice. "Let me introduce you to a new one."

The pews were filled, but those in them were dead or dying. Even the few candles that had been set out in hasty respect had blown out in the wind cutting through broken windows.

Csilla was on the floor next to where Ágnes' body lay, head pillowed on her arms, pale and still like a corpse herself in the moonlight. For a moment his heart stopped, only starting again when she took a deep breath that ended in a small snore.

If she were dead it would be sad, but it wouldn't matter. He tried to remind himself as his steps quickened.

At least now there was no glass to show how he lied to himself.

"Csilla." He crouched down next to her, frowning at the pink scrapes marring her cheek. She opened her hazel eyes slowly, lips curving into a soft and relieved smile, and the dog lunged forward to lick her and receive a pat.