She ceased her struggles and looked up at his face with confusion. She could not understand his spoken words, but the mood behind them was devastating.

“I will have mercy on you,” he continued, not releasing her. “I will spare you, as my darling did not spare me. Because I cannot directly feel your emotion, not in the sense you can feel mine. Because you cannot comprehend the paradox of your makeup. Because I know the sincerity of your intent, and the necessity of your widowhood. Because I want to make you happy in the brief time available to me. I shall reward you by taking out on you all the fury I feel for what your sister has made of me.

“I’m going to kill you, Misery.”

He took her head in his powerful hands, hooking his fingers in her ears, and twisted. She smiled. His muscles jumped as he wrenched, trying to break her neck, but slowly. She gave herself up to the luxury of it. She was like a doll, limp, pliable, unbelievably tough underneath. Then the fury took him, and he drove her head against the mattress as though to tear it off and bury it by brute force.

It was a long, long time before, exhausted, he realized that bare hands, no matter how capable, were insufficient to kill the minionette. She was a creature of punishment; she was made for this; she delighted in it.

Aton rested, defeated, her body warm against his, caressing him, loving him. He had not been able to expunge that which was in him.

Would a knife pierce that seemingly fragile flesh? He was afraid to find out. The whip, well worn, had left no sign on her body.

But there were other mysteries. All the minionettes were cast from a single mold; all responded to the to the sadistic love inversion, while the men appeared to be normal. But he had seen no old women. Could they all be young?

“How long do you live, Misery?” this time the signal.

She tried to answer him. “There is no limit—”

“You are immortal?”

“No.”

“How do you die?”

“When there is pain, too much, it kills.”

And our love is your pain, he thought. As long as a man hates you, you live and grow more beautiful and your hair flames. But when he is kind to you, when he loves you, you die.

Yet it had been Pink Rock who had died, not his woman.

“Do you know the meaning of love?” he asked her.

“Oh, yes, it is my being. I love—”

“Did you love Pink Rock?”

“Yes—he was good, at first. But we had no son. Then his mind became twisted, and he hurt me. I might have made him love me again, if they had not taken him away.”