Ilan was merely grateful the conversation seemed to be over.
‘We’ll have to leave the body here until I can bring a cart at least. I’m sure even if they won’t let him back in you won’t want him burned on your property?’
The stink of crematoriums soaked into the wood, and the place was wretched enough already without the char of burned fat and flesh in the walls.
‘It doesn’t matter to me. If the Servants of the Road can’t come and claim him, do it here,’ Mihály said. He reached for the bottle again, and Ilan snatched it before he could.
‘If you get so drunk I have to carry you back to Silgard...’
It was the emptiest of threats. Mihály had ten inches and who knew how many pounds on him and would be impossible tomove. Facts were facts even if admitting it was a slight bruise to the ego. But Mihály shrugged.
‘It takes more than alcohol to put me out, unfortunately. But I do enjoy it. What do you enjoy, besides hurting people?’
‘I enjoy when annoying people are quiet.’ Ilan tamped down his nerves and set down his glass. There was something about Mihály that was dangerously enticing, the way a moth would fly to a candle even if it singed.
Mihály laughed, and of all the things Ilan disliked about him, the fact that his laugh was so inviting was somewhere near the top.
‘I’ve been called many things, but rarely annoying. You don’t find me charming? Attractive? So holy you want to lick my boots? I’d let you.’ He raised his glass, then downed the contents again.
Ilan rubbed his forehead.
‘Don’t make me puke all this up. Youmustbe drunk if you’re fishing for compliments from me.’
But it was clear enough that Mihály didn’t want the compliments. He just didn’t want to be questioned or think more about what had led him to ask for confession in the first place.
Which meant he probably should talk.
‘Whatever you tell me in confession is held in confidence,’ he reminded Mihály, who was busily trying to shake the last amber drops from the bottle. His hand stilled, and he set the bottle down.
When he turned his gaze back on Ilan, the look in his eyes was so fierce Ilan was struck. Old records said angels could only show a fraction of their true forms while on the human plane, lest they shatter the mind of the flawed creation that could only have second-hand knowledge of the fullness of the divine. Mihály had never looked to him like anything more thanan exceptionally well-formed, exceptionally awful example of humanity.
But now Ilan could feel the phantoms of wings and eyes and celestial fire he carried in his flesh.
‘What if I tell you that sometimes I think I killed Evie, that I don’t remember if she was breathing or not before I split my veins? Or that when I look at Csilla, I wish there was a way I really could exchange them, body and soul?’ His breath was ragged, a new and oily note in his voice that hurt Ilan’s ears like nails on glass.
‘You want Csilla to die?’
Ilan was half on his feet. It was part of why he would have made a poor congregational priest – the moment he heard something awful, his first instinct was to punish it.
‘I don’t want her to die. I just want Evie to live. I can call the ghost, but I don’t know how much she’ll change.’ His eyes were darting now, no doubt looking for another bottle, and Ilan wasn’t sure which woman Mihály was referring to.
‘Csilla thinks you care about her.’ Ilan couldn’t keep the disgust out of his voice. Csilla looked at Mihály with eyes luminous as a saint’s image, trusting and sure. ‘She’s ruining herself to help you, and you don’t even want her.’
‘I don’t have to want her; I need her to want me. And I know she’s trying to help herself. She wants a soul. It’s as selfish as anything else.’ He moved to a cabinet, looking through leftover bottles for something still drinkable.
It wasn’t; it was far worse than any petty greed he’d beaten out of the citizenry. But people often saw others as a reflection of themselves. People often mistook Ilan for callous, not understanding that what he did came from deep care and devotion.Thiswas callous.
‘It’ll be fine once she’s Evie, I’m sure I won’t be able to help but love her then. If you want to tell me how awful I am, that’s fine. I tell myself every day.’
The hair on the back of Ilan’s neck stood up.
‘If you just want to whine and self-flagellate you might as well let me grab a horsewhip and do it for you.’
If that’s what he wanted absolution from, he wasn’t going to get it. The self-loathing rant made him want to shove Mihály’s face in an icy well, possibly not let him come up, and place Csilla in the nearest cloistered order.
Mihály raised an interested eyebrow, then took another long sip. The darkness was suddenly gone, replaced by troubled confusion. He set the bottle down, though the glass rattled with his unsteady hands, went back to the chair, and put his head in his hands.
‘I want to be better. But I’m not. And you can’t tell her that.’
