Melissa did not turn. She set the jacket down on the sofa. Smoothed it with her palm.
"Sure, Cassiopeia. You've got it." Melissa was in no mood to argue with the woman from the start and preferred Cassiopeia got everything she wanted and got out of her face and room.
Cassiopeia's face tightened.
"What is this, Melissa... You know what I am. His... his slave for eternity. It is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I cannot betray him — I would die before I let harm come to either of you and you know that. You know about this enough to know I am not lying. Is that not enough? Can an eternity of devotion not, somehow, somewhere, erase my wrongs?"
Melissa laughed.
It was not the dry chuckle.
The real one — a small, bright, merciless sound that came up out of Melissa's chest with the quiet, helplessness of a woman who had just been asked something so far outside the grammar of her actual life that the only available response was bitter amusement.
