31
Csilla
Ilan hadn’t asked her to move, and for that she was grateful. There was something primal about sitting with a body, appeasing the inner animal that had to see a thing with its senses to know that it was true. Ágnes was stiff, but so was she, shoulders curled and legs drawn up, back cracking every time she shifted.
And Ilan, sitting on an empty bench with his dog at his feet, eyes never leaving her. His face was gaunt, eyes rimmed with exhaustion. She likely didn’t look any better. It would be smarter to go and rest. Things were always clearer in the morning.
She didn’t want to face that clarity. The bone-ache of sleeplessness and the fog of grief were a welcome cushion, no matter how much they hurt.
‘Do you hear Their voice?’ Ilan asked, the words echoing in the midnight still. His tone was measured, but she could hear the hope behind it.
She brushed a fingertip across the metal pin on Ágnes’s still chest, the light dancing across it no longer pleasing. Saints didn’t get to pick their miracles, and the truth of that left her sour.
‘No. It wasn’t me doing anything or being told to do anything. I couldn’t control it. If I could...’
She still would have saved Madame Varga. She would have just donemore. The horror of it all still squeezed her chest. She wanted someone to hold her and tell her it would be fine, but the only person willing to was cold.
Well – and Mihály. Perhaps she should have asked him to give her some of that drink he used to forget his own pain. She could forgive him the vice more easily now that she knew what it was to have your heart smashed to ground glass, tearing bits of you from the inside with every beat.
‘If anything it felt like I was being used,’ she admitted. ‘I wanted her to come back to life, truly I did, but it wasn’t me making it happen. It was like They came through me.’ Like she was a pane of glass, refracting the power of the sun.
‘Isn’t that prayer?’ he countered. ‘We direct our wants, not the power that answers them.’
The fact that only the Incarnate should be able to even hear the direct answer to a prayer hung between them, as present and effervescent as the lingering smoke.
Ilan was no doubt thinking how glad he was that she had been sent out from the Church – no one this embarrassingly distraught deserved to serve the divine. Grief was for laypeople who hadn’t fully surrendered their lives to a greater plan.
‘Come on.’ Ilan stood and gestured for her to follow him. ‘You need to rest. You’ve done your sitting. You can tell me whatever stories you like. And in the morning we’ll start her rites. I fear that things are going to get lost.’
It was a short mourning. Whatever family Ágnes still had should be told, and Csilla didn’t even know who her family might be, only that she’d been raised in a lakeside village near the city of Kis that she didn’t often speak of. Csilla had loved the woman with the simple selfish innocence of a child, never taking the time to understand her as a person. It was cruel that this was what it took to realise that.
‘Thank you.’ She rubbed the scratch of drying tears from her face, then placed her palm against Ágnes’s cheek in a silent goodbye. ‘For doing this for her. For me. Even though...’
‘Even though?’ He ushered her out of the sanctuary, blocking her from turning back.
That was kind; everything in her wanted to stay.
‘Even though you don’t like me. And I’m a murderer.’ It was by manipulation and circumstance, erased by something strange and holy, but there was blood crusting under her fingernails all the same.
His hand pressed harder against her lower back.
‘I never said I didn’t like you, Csilla. And there wasn’t any sin on you.’ He turned her down a corridor she dimly remembered as leading to his room. This far in the stone interior was untouched by the fire, but the char flavoured every breath.
‘There was never any visible sin on Mihály, either. And he did awful things.’
Perhaps she was trying to goad him into punishing her. Burned skin or broken thumbs had to be better than this.
‘I wish I’d been stronger, like you. If I’d justobeyed...’ But if she’d had the choice to make again, she would have chosen the same, and she hated herself for it. ‘You would have killed him.’
‘Without a second thought,’ Ilan agreed. ‘And we wouldn’t be any better off for it. They would have found another way.’
He pushed open his door, nose wrinkling at the stale air. The odour of the fire had permeated even here. ‘You can recite for her in the morning.’
‘I’m no priest.’ Nothing she could say would help Ágnes, and there was no one around who needed soothing through grief except her.
‘No.’ His voice was low, a half-whispered caress. ‘But you are something holy.’
‘Shouldn’t you take me to the Prelate, then?’ To anyone who had knowledge of why a girl without a soul would be worked through for a miracle. A small part of her hoped he’d be pleased to see her shine.
