Cordis

[Cordis]

It would be lovely to indulge the lie – the wish? – that she is nothing. To purge herself, make herself into a silver shell, heartbeat echoing in the hollows where her ribcage once was. She wants sometimes to forget, the good and the bad. To forget the way He would breathe smoke in her ear, tell her how the cities defied him so he burned them to ash. To forget the way He would break every bone in her body, take her apart piece by piece to the sound of her screaming and begging. (funny that the boy says kill yourself, not knowing you’ve died a hundred times over, are practically on a first name basis with death) The good, too: to forget the love so sweet she would kill for it (did kill for it), the way Spyndle’s name tastes right in her mouth. Forget the children, one celestial and one damned, the alchemy they begot in a breathless frenzy years in the making. But it’s a fool’s errand, such thoughts. She cannot forget any of it. She is not nothing, rather, she is too much. Too much death and hurt and love and lightning. She is – as we’ve said before, many times – an Atlas, worlds on her shoulders, knees shaking. “I don’t think I could,” she says, when he suggests that she kill herself. Lord knows the thought’s crossed her mind, but she’s died so many times, begged Him to kill her, let her die so many times – she would not give Him the satisfaction. The colt surprises her by moving closer, by reaching out to taste her silver skin, and she jumps back. Her skin flickers, the lightning rolling over her like a wave, a warning sign in neon. Very few people have touched her and two of them – the wayfarer and the prophetess – are dead now. “Touch me again,” she says, and her voice is flat, thinned out by years spent shrieking in His lair, “and you’re the one who will be nothing.” 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