”I’m really glad you’re back,” Maxwell said again, softer than he had earlier, now that it was just the two of them and the night. “I… I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get you back.”
“I am glad you are alive,” Torse said. “My mind is mine when the Queen of Zern takes my body— I am no naughtomata. I could see myself, but was powerless to intervene, though I managed to speak once. I feared I might kill you.”
“It would be an honor to die at your hand,” Maxwell said, then blushed. “Sorry that’s… probably a bit much.”
“It is alright,” Torse said. “I like it when you are too much.”
After a few minutes, Maxwell spoke again.
“What does it feel like, when you have your iron heart? When you’re not possessed, of course.”
Torse doesn’t know if he would call it possession, but that’s not the main point. “It feels like… like focus. Like I know what I need to do, and I can’t do anything else. Like I know what I am made for. It is difficult to be anything but violent with that heart.”
Maxwell nodded. “I understand,” he said. “That’s how it feels when I take off my gloves.”
Involuntarily, Torse’s sight moved downward to Maxwells hands, covered in white gloves.
“Would you like to see?” Maxwell said. “I wouldn’t mind showing you.”
“If you wish it,” Torse said.
Maxwell pulled off his gloves, one after the other. His knuckles were scarred and scabbed. Torse gazed at them reverently.
“These are why my father hates me,” Maxwell said. “Not that I care, he murdered my grandfather, but—“
“I will murder him for you in return,” Torse said. “As I will do you any who show you unkindness.”
Maxwell smiled softly, and the skin at the corner of his mouth crackled, dried from the wind. “Thanks Torse.”
Maxwell had to go sleep soon after this. He requires rest. Torse, who does not, remains. He sits, and he thinks about love, and whimsy, and violence, and the forms he is capable of taking. He wonders what he wants, once the Queen of Zern is gone.
By dawn, he knows his answer.
