Looking at him still makes her dizzy, but creeping in as well is a feeling of want, heady and hot. She wants to take him, steal him, though he is not a child but something mostly grown. She wants to remake him, purge him of His touch (those stars, god, she knows those, she knows His obsessions, one of the things confessed in those horribly intimate moments when He took breaths in between killing her).
“Pentecost,” she repeats. A beautiful name, though she doesn’t know the meaning of it.
“My daughter-,” she says, and the word hurts, like thorns, “her name is Perse.”
It’s not the name she gave her, but it’s the one Perse used, when she met Spyndle (not Cordis – Corids only knew of the meeting later, when Spyndle used the knowledge like a sword. They fought so much. They loved so much. She bled for her in every way she could). Perse, like Persephone -- His own little joke, no doubt.
‘I haven’t seen her in a very long time,” she says. No, not since Perse was a girl, and He appeared and Cordis watched, helpless on her knees, unable to strike Him (she’d tried, thrown lightning at Him, and He had said she will feel every bit of damage you give to me tenfold and god help her, she couldn’t do it).
She lets the lightning die down on her skin, sinking into her. She is no longer such a weapon (though it slinks beneath her, under the surface, waiting). She steps closer, examining him, the stars, the purple of his mane.
“Can I…?” she asks. She is close, muzzle hovering near his neck, so curious to touch him.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me