Let the shadows fall behind us [open]

[Cordis]

She wasn’t the first to tour His lair, but she was perhaps its longest inhabitant. It’s one of those memories burned across her mind as vividly as the brand is burned on her hip. The memory of a child (Mahala – she had been Mahala, then; a mousy brown girl) who woke to find her father dead, who walked away from his corpse without knowing how to grieve. And then, He had appeared, had regarded her, and asked that fatal question: are you alone? Yes, she’d said. An answer that burns her tongue still when she thinks about it – that she had, in some way, invited this. From there – a lair, a stink of sulfur, years and years of Him taking her apart and remaking her, telling her horrific stories of His deeds. He left her alone, often, as He has little concept of time, but He always returned with new stories, one whispered in her ear accented by the fetid stench of His breath. From there – she’d escaped, or perhaps He had grown bored enough not to care. From there, the magic He had kept dormant within her emerged, and she grew silver, grew electric, grew into a woman who fell in love and ah, what a different kind of agony that was. The woman gives her name – Tang – and then breaks into tears, and Cordis bristles in her discomfort. She is not a comforting woman, and compassion does not come naturally to her. But there is a kinship in the woman’s grief, she suspects (she’d cried too, in the lair, and many times after, the memories refusing to stay buried). It does things to a person. “He hurt you,” she says. Not a question. She is sorry that she is not alone in knowing this type of grief. “But you escaped,” she says. Possibly true, and besides, it sounds better than He grew bored of you and let you go, because killing would have almost been kind. c o r d i s I’ll touch you all and make damn sure that no one touches me