we were made out of lightning; any

[Cordis]

For the first time in a long time, she thinks about dying. She’d died a hundred times over in His lair, after He flayed every inch of skin from her body, or saw fit to burn her to ashes. He would always bring her back and she would awake, whole, unburnt, with only the memory of the pain. She died in her dreams, too, until she’d complied enough deaths so that she no longer knows which ones were real and which weren’t. Not that it mattered – the end result was always the same, with her brought back to life to continue His games. He’d never let her stay dead, though she’d begged enough times (the memories of it – her on her knees, all dignity gone, mewling and begging for Him to end it, to let her stay dead). When she’d escaped she’d never considered dying, and when the magic that had lain dormant for so many years had risen up in her veins, dressed her in molten silver and whispered around her like electricity, she thought she might never have to. But now she considers it. She finds herself eyeing the cliff faces, the black dread of the oceans. She could walk out, turn herself to stone and sink down into the depths. Hell, she could probably do it herself, summon the lightning, turn it inside of herself, burn from the inside out. But she knows in all those deaths her last memories would not be of the lovely things, but of Him, how He had done this to her once before. He had taken so much from her, including the unique pleasure of death. So she does not die, although her eyes fall on foxglove and nightshade and wonders about the bitterness. She does not die even though she would love to have everything stop, so that her mind would cease replaying Spyndle’s words (“I can’t, I can’t,” an homage – a mockery? – of their meeting, because everything in life is circular and they’d come back, back to this, back to where no one could be touched and their eyes were wild like animals caught in traps). So she would quit replaying the image of Him walking away with their daughter at His side, and the nights she’s spent since praying for the girl to have died and stayed dead, because with Him, that was the most you could hope for. Part of her wants to run because she always runs, it’s what she does, her natural state. But she feels heavy, leaden, like she has turned herself to stone without ever setting foot in the ocean. She is an Atlas with worlds on her shoulders but one of those worlds – the one with Spyndle, with hazel and riverbanks – has fallen, and she wonders if the other worlds will fall, too. c o r d i s she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake and she learned a lesson back there in the flames