“I guess the water’s safe,” she said.

“Turn around.”

Garnet turned with a sullen half-smile. Aton put a hand on her collarbone, fingers touching her neck, the heel of it just above and between her breasts. He exerted slow pressure. “You body will tumble into that mist,” he said. “Over and over until it thuds against the bottom with no sound for human ears, and lies there, mistress to the rock and gas until it rots and sublimates into food for the sacrificial flame. A pyre for Garnet. You’ll like that, won’t you?”

“We both drank, and nothing happened. Must be good water.”

“Perhaps I will make love to you first,” he mused. “Then you would have to die. Everything I touch has to die.”

“Yes.”

He nudged her, but Garnet did not flinch. “It is deep behind you,” he said. “Deep as a well.

“I never knew quite how she traveled,” Aton continued, his had sliding down to press against her breasts, but keeping her poised at the brink. “I left her on the asteroid, locked in the spotel, and I took the shuttle myself, so that she had either to remain or reveal her identity and location to outsiders. I went home, and then to Idyllia, but somehow she never left me—and I found her again on Hvee. She was in the forest with her song—the song she never finished. I knew then that I had to kill her.”

Garnet’s bare heels rested on the verge.

“But there was no cliff, no mountain, there near the farm. It had to be that special way, you see. I took her to the forest well, so narrow, so dep. Let the fall kill her as it killed my second love, as it broke the shell.”

He stepped close, bending his elbows, placing a hand on each of Garnet’s shoulders. “Because death made love an illusion. ‘Kiss me, Aton,’ she said, there on the mountain, there at the well. And then the song came up.” He shook her. “Say it.”

Garnet’s eyes were closed. “Kiss me, Aton.” Death was as close to her as his lips.

“The crime that budded in effigy had to blossom in reality. I touched her lips.” He kissed her, carefully. “And I hurled her—”

Garnet’s feet left the edge as Aton’s brutal strength lifted her out. She swung beyond the drop, and sank, and fell, and came to rest beside him, lying on the floor.

He stroked her hair. “And she said, ‘I knew you could not do it, Aton—not when it was real.’ And I could not. And love made death an illusion.”

He held her there, still and mute. “There is no song about you, Garnet,” he said. “But if I were to love you, the song would come, and you would perish, for only the minionette rules me.”

“The minionette,” Garnet whispered.