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I think of him with a gaping hole in his chest, and I don’t even hesitate.

I leap forward and grab hold of him. I get him by the wrists, then wrestle with the swing he’s attempting. Even though I know it’s utterly futile to do so. He has fifty times the strength I do. He can just jerk one arm and fling me across the room.

Yet I do it anyway.

I risk being thrown through a wall for him.

As if somewhere inside myself, I’m massively starting to believe this guff. More than that, maybe—a part of me is pretty obviously seeing him in a completely different light. And that different light apparently has me convinced to do this, despite the possibility of multiple catastrophic injuries. Just make the sword disappear, I tell myself, as I risk life and limb.

But then it registers:

I don’t think my life and my limbs are really being risked at all.

I manage to move his arms and hands out of a good stabbing position with pretty much minimal resistance. Honestly, I’m not even sure if it’s resistance at all. It reminds me so much of a big guy letting some little kid win at arm wrestling. Though I don’t fully believe that until I try for the sword.

I go to prize it out of his hands, and he just … gives it up.

All I get from him is a frustrated sigh, and a longing look at the weapon in my hands. Honestly, I have to fight to stay skeptical. “Enough of this charade. None of it even makes any sense,” I blurt out, thankfully breathless and red-faced enough from the non-fight that my words do have some heft to them. They sound impatient and annoyed. Plus now I have a giant sword in my hand.

I try waving it at him a little.

And fail, obviously.

It weighs a fucking ton. My spindly arm muscles can barely get it off the ground. I find myself thinking, not for the first time, that I really have to stop relying on magic so much and start getting real about some strength training. And doubly so when I see the slightly baffled look on his face.

What is this tiny human trying to do, I can almost hear him thinking.

And I’m right, because it’s there in his voice and his words, too.

“Perhaps you might permit me to help you,” he says.

God, it makes me want to fucking die.

“I don’t need your help. I need you to explain yourself.”

“Because I wish to use a sword to shield you from my evil?”

“No, because you want to shield me from evil, full stop.”

“I have already told you why this is so.”

“Yeah, yeah, my soul is cool, my magic is good, and my face is nice.”

“Such a small and thin description for so bewitching a woman,” he says, and god, when he does. I hate admitting it, but it thumps me right in the chest. And I don’t even think it’s just the words, either. It’s all the other stuff that happens as he says them. The slight hint of amusement in his voice—like it was just that silly to him to imagine anyone believing this.

And the look in his eyes.

How they search my face for any sign that what I said was true. Then clearly come up empty. I don’t want to say his gaze is smoldering when it finally meets mine, but it’s so close I kind of have to. I just thank god that I don’t have to admit it to him. That I can scoff and roll my eyes at him in exactly the way I want to. “If I’m bewitching I dread to think what Monica Geller does to you.”

But that just seems to make him curious.

He leans in, searching, wondering—like he did when he didn’t know what Phone was. “You do not believe you are, then? This is why you doubt me?”

“No. No, I know that. I mean, I know that I’m attractive.”

“It does not sound as if you are convinced. Perhaps if I rendered it in song—” he starts to say, and actually lifts one hand like a fucking opera singer about to belt out the big notes. I swear, every inch of my body breaks out in a cold sweat on seeing it. I almost jab him with the sword just to make him stop.

Then settle for words, by the skin of my teeth.