Teardrop

She shook her head.

“Then give me the chance you’re giving this book.” Ander pressed a hand to his heart. “The difference between you and me is that from the moment I was born I have been raised with the story you found on these pages.”

“How? Who are your parents? Are you in a cult?”

“I don’t exactly have parents. I was raised by my aunts and my uncles. I am a Seedbearer.”

“A what?”

He sighed. “My people come from the lost continent of Atlantis.”

“You’re from Atlantis?” she asked. “Madame Blavatsky said … But I didn’t believe …”

“I know. How could you have believed? But it is true. My line was among the few who escaped before the island sank. Since then, our mission has been to carry forward the seed of Atlantis’s knowledge, so that its lessons will never be forgotten, its atrocities never be repeated. For thousands of years, this story has stayed among the Seedbearers.”

“But it’s also in this book.”

Ander nodded. “We knew your mother possessed some knowledge of Atlantis, but my family still has no idea how much. The person who murdered your translator was my uncle. The people you encountered at the police station, and on the road that night—those people raised me. Those are the faces I saw at the dinner table every night.”

“Where exactly is that dinner table?” For weeks, Eureka had been wondering where Ander lived.

“No place interesting.” He paused. “I haven’t been home in weeks. My family and I had a disagreement.”

“You said they wanted to hurt me.”

“They do,” Ander said miserably.

“Why?”

“Because you are also a descendant of Atlantis. And the women in your lineage carry something very unusual. It is called the selena-klamata-desmos. That means, more or less, Selene’s Tearline.”

“Selene,” Eureka said. “The woman engaged to the king. She ran off with his brother.”

Ander nodded. “She is your matriarch, many generations back. Just as Leander, her lover, is my patriarch.”

“They were shipwrecked, separated at sea,” Eureka said, remembering. “They never found each other again.”

Ander nodded. “It is said that they searched for each other until their dying day, and even, some say, after death.”

Eureka looked deeply into Ander’s eyes and the story resonated with her in a new way. She found it unbearably sad—and achingly romantic. Could these thwarted lovers explain the connection Eureka had felt to the boy sitting next to her—the connection she’d felt from the moment she first saw him?

“One of Selene’s descendants carries the power to raise Atlantis again,” Ander continued. “This is what you just read in the book. This is the Tearline. The Seedbearers’ reason for existing hinges on the belief that raising Atlantis would be a catastrophe—an apocalypse. The legends of Atlantis are ugly and violent, filled with corruption, slavery, and worse.”

“I didn’t read anything about that in here.” Eureka pointed at The Book of Love.

“Of course not,” Ander said darkly. “You’ve been reading a love story. Unfortunately, there was more to that world than Selene’s version. The Seedbearers’ goal is to prevent the return of Atlantis from ever happening by—”

“Killing the girl with the Tearline,” Eureka said numbly. “And they think I carry it.”

“They’re fairly certain.”

“Certain that if I were to weep, like it says in the book, that—”

Ander nodded. “The world would flood and Atlantis would return to power.”

“How often does one of these Tearline girls come along?” Eureka asked, thinking that if Ander was telling the truth, many of her family members might have been hunted or killed by the Seedbearers.

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