and he told me i was holy;; cordis.

[Cordis]

This is the horror of it: it gets easier.
Easier, to make your voice like milk and honey. Easier, to stand before them with the lightning wrapped around you, all but screaming danger, but to smile and tell them you’re harmless. Easier, to think of whip-cracks, and have the lightning snap out in one swift motion and leave behind a swath of skin, scorched.
And maybe it wouldn’t be easier if it wasn’t so damn gratifying.
(That’s the other horror of it: it is a pleasure to burn.)

With the boy, there had been a part of her that had shouted its dismay. But with this girl, the voice is quieter.
The lightning crackles across her skin. She feels warm and powerful and untouchable. She does not let herself think of anything
(anyone)
else.

She notes with a quiet cunning how the filly steps backward. A tenseness flicks across her own muscles, she is ready to move quickly before she’s even aware. But the filly stills, looks at her.
And there is something in her eyes that a part of Cordis – a part deep-buried, but a part nonetheless – recognizes.
It is a look of a thing hunted. It is a look Cordis knows too well, having worn it for years when she saw hellhounds in every shadow and His mark burned like fire on her hip.
“Who’s after you, child?” she asks, because like knows like, and though Cordis now does her best to shed that particular skin – the skin of the hunted – it cannot be shaken completely.

she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake

Cordis

(and she learned a lesson back there in the flames)