She’d said she’d do anything to have her magic back, and she wasn’t lying. She’s not much of a liar, she has no time or energy for it, the truth spills blunt from her lips when she finds occasion to speak.
She didn’t know what, exactly, she had promised the girl, but it hadn’t mattered, because there was so little she would not do to have her magic back. She’s killed before – some deserving, some not – and as she stands now, a woman cold with two hearts beating but a lover gone, she has even less mercy than before. There has always been a blackness to her heart, one either bred or put there (He took her so young that there is no detangling nature from nurture), and now, without Spyndle to act as a dam, as a lighthouse beckoning, the blackness grows, like frostbite.
Ultimately, she is selfish – those whom she loved are gone or dead, and all that’s left is herself, a silver figure draped in lightning.
But she is a woman of her word – out of some fear that the woman might revoke her gift, if nothing else – so when the woman cries out for her, not by name but by title, because Cordis is just a thing to her, as the woman is just a restoration to Cordis; she appears, honed to her side by whatever joined them.
The woman is distraught, a froth of sweat to her, and Cordis can smell it on her as well. It’s distasteful, in a way, and the lightning over her skin crackles. But she stays. She is here, obedient, a pet magician.
“I’m here,” she says, and her voice is steady, “I’ll pay my dues.”
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me