by Lauren Kate
"Don't move," a voice behind her called.
Eureka turned and something blade-sharp bit her gut.
Wetness. Heat spooling through the fingers clutching her stomach. Everything red. An orichalcum arrow lodged in her flesh. She grimaced and yanked it out. Green vapors swirled from her open wound. The glowing arrow was artemisia-tipped.
The remaining Devil stood twenty feet away, her crossbow resting on her shoulder. As Eureka stumbled toward her, she loaded another arrow, aimed shakily, and fired. A green flash bloomed through the tunnel.
Eureka ducked. Or maybe she fell. She was on her knees. Breath was impossible, a knife slicing organs. She saw an orichalcum club lying on the floor and thought of the organs and blood and bones mined to build it. She thought of those ghosts trapped in the Filling. Adrenaline rushed through her. She crawled on her knees and reached a hand around the Devil's ankle.
The pain of the arrow wound tripled as the essence of Eureka's agony flowed into the girl and the girl's agony flowed into her. This time the vision was of a dappled silver horse, stolen from the girl's family by the gossipwitches.
Eureka got up slowly. Artemisia clouded her mind. She took limited, shallow breaths, hardly enough to sustain her as she moved through the tunnel, away from the castle, away from the fantasy of guilt.
Nothing was real but her pain. When she exited the coral tunnel on the sand dune, she didn't believe it. She watched her fingers unbutton her shirt, her hands tie it around her chest to stanch her wound.
The moon looked like her mother's face. The roiling ocean sounded like her father cooking in the kitchen. But her father never sang when he cooked. What did she hear? It was so familiar.
Music from Delphine's waveshop boomed in Eureka's ears. Her other mother. Mother murder.
Brooks was in there. She wanted to go to him. No. She spat on the sand, disgusted with herself. She turned toward the purple Gossipwitch Mountains. The only way to release Brooks was to win.
She remembered the gossipwitch salve that had healed her once before. One foot in front of the other. Up the slope. Tripping over rocks. Trail of blood behind her. Clouds over the moon. The tide of pain was high.
At last, Eureka saw the fire. Three gossipwitches sat in a bright circle, turning spits over the flame. She smelled roasted meat. She thought they were wearing purple. She thought she heard bees buzzing. She stumbled and caught herself on a massive rock. "I'm looking for my--"
"Haven't seen them," one witch said. The others laughed.
"Esme," Eureka said breathlessly. "Do you know where Esme is?"
The witches gaped at her. "You are not one of us. How dare you spread the gossip of our names?"
Eureka let herself slide down the rock. She crawled on her stomach toward the fire. The heat was calming and the pressure of the earth felt good on her ribs. Her mouth was filled with dirt. She didn't have the strength to spit it out. "You know who I am. You know why I'm here. You're home now because of me. Where are my family and my friends?"
"You gave them up, remember?"
Eureka closed her eyes. Her fingers worried the earth, feeling for a switch to shut everything off.
31
NOSTALGIA
Fingers parted Eureka's lips and a warm liquid filled her mouth. She swallowed once reflexively, then tasted the soothing caramel-chocolate broth and began to gulp.
She opened her eyes slowly. Ander leaned over her, smelling like the ocean. They were rocking, and for a moment she wondered if they were on a boat. His warm hand was on her forehead.
"I didn't think the dead could dream," she heard herself say distantly, which made her think of Brooks trapped in the waterfall in the waveshop. She yearned to go to him. But in the moments when her eyelids fluttered, she yearned for Ander, too. It made her feel weak, like she needed too much.
Ander's eyes shone with a tenderness Eureka didn't comprehend. His love was a language she had once known, but now it looked foreign, a sign in a station she didn't understand.
"She's awake?" William's footsteps announced his arrival at her side.
Eureka sat up. She was in a moth-wing bower suspended in a vast purple cave. Her brother flung his arms around her neck. Claire was there a moment later. She let the twins hug her and she knew she was hugging back, but it didn't feel like hugging. She saw it from another perspective, somewhere far away, as if she were sitting on the moon, watching the children embrace someone they loved.
"I told you she'd wake up," William said.
"We're witches now!" Claire said.
"You lost a lot of blood," Ander said. "Esme found you on the mountain and brought you here. Her salve closed your wound."
A translucent layer of amethyst lotion faded into Eureka's torso. The wound beneath it was frightening.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"Late," Ander said.
"The arrow broke two of your ribs." Esme appeared behind Ander. "You are bruised, but you can fight."
"Pain is power," Eureka said. The twins gave her puzzled looks.
The cave where she'd awoken was a grander version of the witches' lair in the Turkish mountains. The walls were a lovely glittering violet, lit by blazing amethyst fires. The furniture looked as though it had been lifted from an expensive boutique hotel. Witches dangled from purple swings suspended from the ceiling and danced around the fires smoking long twisted pipes.
"Where's Cat?" Eureka asked.
Ander offered Eureka another ladle of the chocolate broth. "Cat stayed behind."
"What?"
"The Celans are building arks for the survivors of the flood. She wanted to stay and help. She thought she could use her quirk and the gossipwitch ability to fly to store up food before they left. It's the Waking World's last hope."
"So naive," Eureka muttered. She imagined Cat in Turkey, bees swarming her head, using her loving quirk to hand out cherries and hazelnuts to the people boarding the arks. She hoped her friend would crack a dirty joke at the end of the world.
"What?" Ander leaned closer to her.
"How did the rest of you get here?"
"We took Ovid's flume." Ander seemed surprised to have to explain. "Like we were all supposed to do."
Eureka shifted miserably. "But why?"
"To help you." He took her hand. "Don't worry about what happened when you left. We're together now, that's what matters. You got away from Brooks."
"Atlas," she said darkly. "Remember? There's a difference?"
"You don't have to push me away because you made a mistake."
"I know that." She groaned and flung back the fox-fur covering. "I have plenty of reasons to push you away."
"Eureka!"
"Dad?" She spun toward his voice and saw Ovid, reclined on a low lounge chair, surrounded by three witches. Eureka was surprised to feel disappointed. She thought she was done with that sort of feeling. Ovid wore her father's face for an instant before it cycled to feature Filiz's grandmother.
"I have to talk to Solon," Eureka said.
Ander helped Eureka from the bower. His assistance was infuriating, and she needed it. The witches snickered at her intensity as she hobbled toward the robot.
The robot twisted gruesomely. She saw her father again, then Seyma's features sharpened and dissolved. Then came the glower of Albion, the head of the Seedbearers.
"You ruined everything!" he shouted as his features melted into those of his cousin Chora. Eureka wished she had Delphine's jellyfish-tipped whip so she could get from the robot only what she wanted.
"Solon," she said, taking the machine's shoulders in her hands. "I need you. You said you were stronger than the rest of these ghosts."
After a moment of vague, featureless struggle, the lost Seedbearer's eyes, nose, and lips solidified on the silver plane of Ovid's face. "The fugitive returns. Kill the fatted calf." He frowned. "Has Atlas got Filiz?"
"Yes."
"Tell me some good news." The robot clapped its silver hands. "What have we learned fro
m the outside?"
"Atlas tried to blackmail me into crying by hurting Filiz."
The robot squinted. "How exactly was that supposed to work?"
"It wasn't," she said. "He thought I cared for her. He doesn't know what love and devotion are."
"Typical male?"
Solon was testing her.
"You asked me once what would happen if I allowed myself to feel joy," Eureka said. "Now I know. Delphine's feelings possess the same power as mine. I saw her weep with happiness"--she lowered her voice--"and her tear brought Brooks back to life."
"Where's Brooks?" Claire asked.
"It can't be," Ander said.
Ovid closed its eyes. Solon's voice said, "I never knew if the rumor was true. Tearline joy is so rare. Out of curiosity, what was it that brightened that dark heart?"
Eureka's cheeks flushed. "I called her 'Mother.' "
"So simple." Ovid rubbed its jaw. "Love never ceases to amaze me. Well, all you have to do is ..."
"I know, cry a joyful tear to resurrect each of the billions of people I've killed," she said glumly. "And I have until sunrise."
"Sounds like a busy night, even for a party animal like you." The robot squinted at her. "You know, before now I had never considered how insignificant your eyes are."
"Thanks."
"For a girl whose tears do what yours do, your eyes are really very ho-hum. One begins to wonder--does it even need to be your eyes that shed the tears?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm about to say something important, something I can recognize only now that I'm liberated from my wretched mortal form. This body"--it rapped softly on Eureka's wounded chest--"doesn't matter. If I were you, I'd give it up."
"And where do you propose she finds another?" Ander asked.
The robot leaned back on the lounge and cradled its head in its hands. It crossed its feet and put them on Eureka's lap. "Where Atlas would feel it most."
"I told you, I don't think Atlas can feel." Eureka paused to consider what she'd just said. She touched her neck, which used to connect her to Diana and the most primal love Eureka had ever felt. It was bare now. "That's it."
"What?" Ander said.
"Delphine told me Atlas's heart wasn't tuned for love," Eureka said.
"That sounds like something you say when the person you love doesn't love you back," Ander said. His tone pleaded for her to meet his eyes, to deny that she didn't love him. But she wouldn't.
"She was speaking literally," Eureka said. "Atlas's heart is out of tune."
"Is Atlas a robot like Ovid?" William asked.
"I don't think so," Eureka said, "but his heart was another one of Delphine's experiments. She did something to remove love from his range. If I can possess Atlas the way he possessed Brooks, the way he tried to possess you"--she looked at Ander--"if I can make him feel joy, make him cry with love, it would destroy him."
Ander studied her closely. "You used to want to redeem yourself, to fix the world. Now all you care about is killing Atlas? Do you know what it would mean to go inside him?"
"Her redemption and his death are tantamount," Solon said. "If Eureka succeeds in making Atlas weep with joy--she is right--the tears would be formidable."
"Powerful enough to reverse the Filling," Esme said in a quiet voice that suggested even the intimidating gossipwitch was sickened by Atlas and Delphine's plan.
"But what about her?" Eureka murmured. If Delphine was the darkness inside Atlas's shadow, she was the true enemy. She always had been.
"That is the question I've been waiting for," Solon said.
Eureka thought back to her last game of Never-Ever, played lifetimes ago on the bayou, when Atlas had used Brooks to hurt her, and she knew what she would do.
"We never see betrayal coming from the ones we love most," she said, and pretended not to see Ander shiver. She reached for one of the gossipwitch pipes, twirled it between her fingers. "But how do I possess him?"
Ovid pointed at Ander. "Ask him."
"No," Ander said. "I won't do it."
"You came here to help me," Eureka said. "What does Solon mean?"
"You die in this plan. If you go into Atlas's body, there will be no way out."
"Don't die, Eureka," William whimpered, and climbed into her lap.
She rocked her brother wordlessly and glared over his head at Ander.
"There has to be another way," Ander said. "I'll go with you. We'll fight Atlas and Delphine together." He gestured at Ovid. "We'll use their weapon against them."
"They have eight more machines just like Ovid, filled with millions of ghosts," Eureka said. "It wouldn't even be a fight."
"You underestimate me," Ovid said, in a voice Eureka couldn't identify.
"You already tried to kill yourself once," Ander said. "I won't let you quit again."
"I don't belong in the world I have to save," Eureka said. "This is the only way."
Ander shook his head. "I meant it when I said I won't live in a world without you," he said. "Eureka, don't you--"
Don't you love me? She knew that was what he wanted to say. She took his hand. "If you weren't a sun and I weren't a black hole, I would."
Ander's eyes were damp. She had never seen him cry before. When he turned away, Eureka was relieved. She was consumed by what she had to do, by the thrill of her discovery about Atlas. She thought of Delphine, more in love with her dark powers than she could ever be with another soul. Maybe they had more in common than Eureka realized.
She felt pressure in the palm of her hand. When she looked down, Ander was pressing the coral arrowhead, the tool Atlas used to enter his possessions, into her palm. It was stained with Ander's blood.
She rested her forehead on Ander's chest. They stayed like that for a moment. The throb of his heartbeat made Eureka's own heart race. Her breath picked up and stabbed her broken ribs. She pulled away. She gazed into his eyes and wanted to ask what he would do after she left, so that she could carry an image of him being okay in her mind. But that was selfish, and there was no answer, because everything anyone might do after Eureka left this cave depended on whether she succeeded or failed.
"Thank you," she said instead.
Ander shrugged. "It's not like I wanted it as a souvenir."
"I mean thank you, for everything."
Ander answered by sweeping his arm around her. He was careful of her ribs as he lifted her off her feet and brought her lips to his. They were locked in a deep kiss before Eureka could pretend she didn't want it. She drank him in--
And felt his joy. It came at her in a deep, profound rush, rejuvenating her soul the way the Crimson Devils' pain had crippled her. She followed Ander's lips around past moments of his brightest happiness.
Within their kiss Eureka saw herself as Ander had seen her: Through the dirty windows of her favorite diner in Lafayette, the Pancake Barn, whirling whipped cream clouds onto a short stack. Jogging along the bayou behind her house, her green cross-country sweatshirt flashing in and out of view among the trunks of oak trees. At the mall with Cat, doubled over with laughter as they tried on a store's most hideous prom dresses. On the brink of tears on the dirt road after Ander rear-ended her. Her teardrop on his fingertip. His breath against her cheek. There now, no more tears.
This was Ander's happiness. All of it was her. Eureka's heart burned with the urge to stay forever, and forever run away.
Ander pulled back first. She expected him to say something, but he stared at her with such amazement she wondered what his experience of the kiss had been, whether it was something he could give words to if he tried.
It was the last time they would see each other. It was so hard to make it end.
"Get to it, Reka," Ovid said in the guise of Dad.
From the back of the cave, Esme brought forward the enormous winged white horse, who neighed at Eureka and flicked her tail. "Let Peggy speed your way."
"I'm going to owe you for this, aren't I?" Eureka asked.
"I
f you succeed, we are the ones who will owe you," Esme said. "But you will be beyond us by then and unable to collect, so indeed, the gossipwitches will still come out ahead."
Eureka took the shivering moth-wing reins. She kissed each twin on both cheeks, making them giggle because no one had ever done that to them before. They hadn't had Eureka's mothers.
"When will you come back?" William asked.
"She isn't," Claire said.
William started to cry. "Yes she is. She loves us."
"If she loved us, she would stay," Claire said.
All her life, Eureka had cycled through the same logic regarding Diana. She didn't have an answer for William. It was not lack of love but a surplus that was Eureka's problem.
Esme picked up the little boy. She reached for Claire's hand. The witches were their mothers now, and maybe that was best.
"Please," Eureka said to Esme. "I'm all they have. I'm not enough. I brought you home. The least you can do is--"
"They are bright and their magic is valuable," Esme said. "A prophet might say someday these mountains will bear the children's names. But you and I both know prophecies can be a drag." She touched the tops of the twins' heads. "They will flourish here."
Eureka hoped so. She hoped they all lived to be nine hundred and fifty, like Noah and his family had in another story about another flood. She hoped when she was finished with Atlas enough would remain of the world to shelter the bright and the magical. She hoped Ander would love someone else who could love him back as beautifully as he had loved Eureka.
She didn't say goodbye. That would have been a lie that she was caring, that she was kind, that she was something other than a mission. She mounted the white horse and rode through the moth-wing doors. She felt Peggy's wings spread above her in the brightening sky.
32
SUNRISE
From a casement in the highest tower of his palace, Atlas watched a pink sliver of light rise from the sea.
After Eureka and Peggy left the Gossipwitch Mountains they'd lost crucial time searching for the king. His castle was vast, its towers numerous, his Crimson Devils stationed in unexpected eaves. Then there were the king's gaudy wax replicas featured in most of the castle windows: Atlas aiming a cannon out of the armory at an invisible enemy; Atlas studying the heavens through a telescope on his balcony; Atlas corrupting a wax sculpture of an Atlantean maid against the windowsill of his bedroom.