Csilla shifted her attention to the cold dirt, spreading her fingers and pushing them down. It wasn’t just Arany here. There were centuries of the lives of the Faithful on this spot, drops of their faith and pledge reaching for the hope of return. Spectral fingers by the thousands reached to twine with hers as old copper stung her nose. People across the Union had put part of themselves into this web. They would stand with her now.
Everything but that blood in the dirt is a lie.
Something caught within her, like a finger snagging a hole in cloth, unravelling everything stitched tight, and she gasped with a pinching pain. This wasn’t the divinity Mihály had described. There was so much more here than simplistic joy, and her mouth filled with a film of metal, and dirt, and sharp salt. The blocks of creation: not nourishing, but foundational.
But nothing she felt was transferring to the Seal. She swallowed the choking flavour, pushing harder, tears pricking her eyes. She reached for Mihály’s cramped hand, a silver glow connecting them, ignored by the earth.
The air was thick with the stink of dying embers. They were failing.
Sandor kicked Ilan from behind as the other man whirled to strike, knocking him to his knees with a heavy thud that sounded enough like cracking bone to strike her heart.
Csilla jumped, pulling away from Mihály with a cry.
‘Ilan!’
Ilan brought his knife up in a wide, artless arc, slicing the man’s outer coat, but not more. There was no way to get a good strike from that angle, and the larger man stepped heavy on Ilan’s hand with a sickening crunch. Ilan hissed, pinned.
‘What are you doing?’ Csilla choked out through the pain of helpless shock.
Sandor cocked his head, darkness bubbling over his lips. It slipped around his face in a slide of oily caress and slithered back up his nose with a sickening slurp.
The demon had had to go somewhere. And with the Church’s magic broken, there had been no way to see the home it had found.
They couldn’t fight, she realised as a smoky film leaked from his pores, rising like steam. This wasn’t a room of weapons, only struggling holiness.
‘I told you to stay out of this, didn’t I?’ Sandor spat at Ilan, whose face went feral in response, white teeth showing despite the boot digging into thin finger bones. ‘Or you could have at least gone out alone when I told you to and had a softer death next to the fool who gave me these robes.’ He kicked Ilan in the chest with a cleaver-on-bone crack.
Understanding chilled Csilla. The man who was supposed to have been here was the body they’d found in the woods. Sandor wasn’t just a poor member of the Church; he was no member at all.
‘You were working with Tamas, then?’ She tried to stall. If Mihály would wake, at least he would be a weapon. ‘You’d rather lose your humanity than trust the Church? You served with them.’
When Sandor grinned, he had an extra row of teeth, sharp and pushing against his lips. ‘Which only convinced me further. You’d be surprised how many of the Servants have cometo see the truth. How many soldiers resent their sanctified conscription. How many know the only righteous path is the broken one.’
The next sound that came out of his mouth was inhuman and corrupt, and at it Mihály stiffened, then began to stir. It was a second resurrection. In the quiet of her shock, grief for Ágnes claimed another moment.
She’d be proud that Csilla was still down here fighting. The seeds of faith and goodness that she’d planted in rocky soil had bloomed into weedy strength.
‘I should thank you.’ The thing that was Sandor screeched. ‘You finished our work well and broke all the remaining protections, took the Church’s sight. I’m not as blessed as Mihály. No one could see past his shine.’
Her knees trembled. ‘What?’
‘It’s a dangerous thing to play with souls,’ Sandor whispered, cold like a new-moon winter night. ‘They’re tricky things, finding the cracks and pieces to cling to, letting themselves seep into awkward places. And angel blood is a lovely conduit when all they want is to touch the divine.’ He looked at Mihály, whose eyes were laced with inky threads. ‘I can feel how much it wanted to stay in you. Any mere human would be a poor substitute.’
He grabbed Ilan by the hair and pulled him back, knife point resting on his forehead. For a moment Csilla was back in the room with Madame Varga, her own hand carving darkness.
‘We thought breaking the city would be enough, but you made a good point, little saint. We have to pollute this room so thoroughly no one will feel the divine again.’ Ilan jerked, then winced as the blade skimmed his skin.
Mihály groaned and shifted, eyes fluttering.
‘Tamas said it’s for our own good,’ Csilla said. If she could speak, she could stall. Every second was a beat of hope, even as no miracle came. ‘That we need to face demons without ourarmour before Asten is willing to return. We have to prove we’re worthy of perfection.’
‘We aren’t the only ones who think so.’ Sandor rolled his head, as if his neck suddenly had an excess of vertebrae. ‘And we aren’t the first to try it.’
‘Stay back, Csilla,’ Ilan said, and at the words the knife slipped, slicing through his brow nearly to his eye. The cuts were starting to take shape, smoke curling from split skin.
Sandor turned slightly. ‘Should I deal with her first?’
He leaped with inhuman speed that should have been impossible for his size and then his skin was branding hers, and beneath that, the dark corruption. He moved to scratch over the healing scabs of her face and she shuddered. Blood streaked down the peeled skin of her cheek in a sticky, crimson tear. There was darkness, probing the opening in the flesh, asking the question again. This time she knew better than to answer.
