Years had passed, hundreds, maybe a thousand. But I recognized the hurt in her voice, the sting of always feeling underfoot and unwanted.

“My father was readying to leave to hunt the firebird. I was just a little girl, but I begged him to take me along. I tried to make myself useful, but all I did was annoy him, and eventually he banned me from his workshop.”

She tapped the table, and I filled her glass once more.

“And then one day, Morozova had to leave his workbench. He was drawn to the pasture behind his home by the sound of my mother’s screams. I had been playing dolls and my sister had whined and howled and stamped her little feet until my mother insisted that I give over my favorite toy, a wooden swan carved by our father in one of the rare moments that he’d paid me any attention. It had wings so detailed they felt nearly downy and perfect webbed feet that kept it balanced in water. My sister had it in her hand less than a minute before she snapped its slender neck. Remember, if you can, that I was just a child, a lonely child, with so few treasures of my own.” She lifted her glass but did not drink. “I lashed out at my sister. With the Cut. I tore her in two.”

I tried not to picture it, but the image rose up sharp in my mind, a muddy field, a dark-haired little girl, her favorite toy in pieces. She’d thrown a tantrum, as children do. But she’d been no ordinary child.

“What happened?” I finally whispered.

“The villagers came running. They held my mother back so that she could not get at me. They couldn’t make sense of what she was saying. How could a little girl have done such a thing? The priest was already praying over my sister’s body when my father arrived. Without a word, Morozova knelt down beside her and began to work. The townspeople didn’t understand what was happening, but they sensed power gathering.”

“Did he save her?”

“Yes,” said Baghra simply. “He was a great Healer, and he used every bit of his skill to bring her back—weak, wheezing, and scarred, but alive.”

I’d read countless versions of Sankt Ilya’s martyrdom. The details of the story had been distorted over time: He’d healed his child, not a stranger’s. A girl, not a boy. But I suspected one thing that hadn’t changed was the ending, and I shivered at the thought of what came next.

“It was too much,” Baghra said. “The villagers knew what death looked like—that child should have died. And maybe they were resentful too. How many loved ones had they lost to illness or injury since Morozova had come to their town? How many could he have saved? Maybe it was not just horror or righteousness that drove them, but anger as well. They put him in chains—and my sister, a child who should have had the sense to stay dead. There was no one to defend my father, no one to speak on my sister’s behalf. We had lived on the outskirts of their lives and made no friends. They marched him to the river. My sister had to be carried. She had only just learned to walk and couldn’t manage it with the chains.”