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“Because I do. And I think it could be that … so do you.”

“Sort of. A little. Not all the time,” I say, but I know I’m only doing it so I don’t give too much away. Playing it safe, with an almost lie. After all, it was only a moment ago that I called him the good one in my head. That I thought of him and the man he was as plural, instead of singular.

It just seems best that he doesn’t know that.

Until he speaks. “Good,” he says, as he nods in this satisfied sort of way. “I should never want you to just accept that I am another man now based on simple words, but to have you know that I am because I have shown you. Because I have earned that acceptance through my deeds and actions.”

He even puts his hand on his goddamn heart.

It’s all I can do not to goggle at him via the mirror, like a schoolgirl with a crush. It’s been a few days, I tell myself. It’s been a few days, it’s been a few days, be reasonable. But something pretty big gets in the way of that. It suddenly shoves its way into my head—so forcefully in fact that I find myself saying it out loud.

“Oh my god. You actually want to stay this way.” I gasp.

But he doesn’t even have the decency to deny it.

“Of course. I have no idea how you could have thought otherwise.”

“I guess … I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it. I must have just … assumed that you thought you had no choice. That you were thinking it couldn’t be reversed, and this was it.”

“You are a mighty sorceress. It would be nothing to you to undo this.”

God, the way he says mighty and sorceress.

It makes me feel like the heroine of a fairy tale.

It’s really no wonder that I say what I do.

“But you also had to know that there was a huge chance I wouldn’t want to.”

“I know that you do not. But that you would have tried, had I not said this.”

“How on earth have you come to that conclusion?” I snort—mainly because my head is still full of me being some Viking witch queen in a Nordic folktale I’ve never heard of. Not to mention all the thoughts of how much safer I now am.

Frankly, I am supposed to want him to never get his memories back.

And he should really understand that. He should never imagine I would take pains to restore him. It just doesn’t make any sense, I think. Just before he launches into this: “I would like to say because it did not benefit you to remove the spell over my eyes, but you did so anyway. Or because of all of this aid you have rendered unto me, your enemy, a man you have little reason to believe in, simply because it feels to you the right thing to do. But truthfully, it is not your kindness and commitment to what is good, even without any hope of reward, even at the expense of yourself. It’s an emotion you fire in my breast, come from I know not where,” he says.

And great, now I’m all sweaty and speechless again.

I can’t even think of a good protest. Or laugh at his absurd assertions.

I just stare and stare until finally, I manage to latch on to the last thing he said.

“Well, to be honest I think that is evidence of some magic I need to reverse.”

“I know you do, but you are wrong. It is not magic that makes my feet want to march to where you are sleeping. You removed my memory of being another man, a hateful man, nothing more.”

Stop saying soppy things like that, I think at him frantically.

But I manage to catch myself before it comes out, and refocus things. “Well, whoever this man is, he needs a wash,” I say, and to my relief he follows me down this path without hesitation.

“Indeed. Now—how am I to gather water? In the moving image Friends, they simply appear in the thing you called a bath, surrounded by strange foam. It is never visually revealed how they obtain the water. Something is said about drawing, but from where?” he says, then steps toward the tub.

It’s the reason I turn around again—but oh boy, does that just throw me out of one fire and into another. Now we’re not in his saying-poetic-things-to-me era. Or the age of his desire to never go back to what he was. Now we’re fully back in the reign of terror caused by his half-nude body.

In fact, it’s not even half anymore.

He has zero pants on now. The pants are completely off. I can see them curled in the corner of the room, as if he knew they were too dirty to put anywhere else. Though of course that’s not where my eyes immediately go.