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

A better creature than she would ask questions.
A better creature would prod and poke, would at least read the situation rather than take it at face value (as if the fervid nature of the words didn’t speak well enough for the nature of the situation). But she is no such creature, she thinks every good part of her was carved out – pieces of her left in His lair, and the rest of her left on the shore of a riverside, next to a pile of bones.
She is jealous, beside - I am in love says the girl, and Cordis knew that feeling, once. Her story was one writ across years – across decades – a tale of water sparkling on her back like jewels, of laurel bushes, of lighthouses beckoning her safe to shore.
(A tale of moments, giving and taking, leaving – but coming back. She always came back, for her.)

Had she not owed the girl something, she would have refused in her own petty jealousies, but instead, she is here with a debt to be paid, to finalize her magic’s return.
The girl still speaks, but Cordis barely listens til she sees her eyes flutter closed, and then she darts into her mind – on the surface, quick like a fish – and grabs the image, hooks it, pulls it out from her mind into something real, into something that she throws over the girl like a blanket.
Spark - the kind of thing that starts fires. So little is needed.
Before her is a crude rendition of the girl, but Cordis looks, and makes changes, colors an eye red, makes the coat wilder.
“It’s done,” she says. She doesn’t ask what the girl will do in her new body.
“Go quick,” she says, “it will only last a few hours.”

I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

Cordis

that no one touches me