“Don’t worry,” she whispered back, confused by what he meant about climbing. “Now that you’re here, I can do it. I have to.”
She could feel him shake his head against her shoulder. “Whatever happens”—he pulled away to look her in the eye—“I love you. I should have said it long ago. It should have been the only thing I ever said.”
“And I love—”
“You may play with him once the sun has risen.” Delphine pressed a hand between their bodies. “I’ll even let you use the whip. Until then we have work to do.”
Eureka’s eyes begged Brooks for more about what he knew and where he’d been, but a waterfall sprang up around him like a cage that hung in the air. She couldn’t see him anymore.
“Eureka!”
Delphine returned to her potter’s wheel and pretended she couldn’t hear Brooks scream.
Eureka pressed her hands against the waterfall. It soaked her. Through it, she could feel Brooks’s shoulder, then his face. She wondered why she couldn’t feel his arms reaching back for her. “Stay with me.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Delphine said. “You can trust me. Now you must prove I can trust you.”
“Delphine?” A crown of red hair hovered at the waveshop’s entrance. Atlas did not look happy.
29
THE LOVED ONE
“I assumed you would be working when Eureka arrived,” Atlas said as he entered the waveshop. The golden light that Eureka’s footsteps had lit turned red as he approached.
Delphine did not look up from her wheel. She pedaled slowly, lengthening each note of the strange music.
“You said you were not to be bothered.” Atlas brushed Delphine’s dark hair to one side and rested a hand on her shoulder.
When Delphine looked up at Eureka she was really looking through her. “You said you wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Show me one scratch on her body.” Atlas approached Eureka and made a close circle around her, seeming not to notice the cuts on her wrist, her bloodied shirt where his spiked cuff had bound her waist. His breath was hot on her neck. His eyes moved across her skin like spiders. “She is in mint condition.”
Eureka envisioned spinning on him, twisting his neck until his arteries popped and the fire in his eyes went cold. She saw the murder in vivid detail, from the strained gurgle coming from his throat to the pathetic thud of his dead body in the sand. But she craved more than Atlas’s annihilation. She also had to steal the profits he had made from her tears. She had to undo the Filling, and she didn’t yet know how.
“You used my lightning on her,” Delphine said. “There are deeper wounds than scratches.” Her focus returned to the orichalcum kneecap her long fingers were shaping. “She must come to the tears in her own way.”
“She refused,” Atlas said.
Tension swam between their words. It reminded Eureka of her parents’ preliminary fights. The memory of Diana’s leaving returned—the nightgown tickling her ankles … the storm outside and within … the slap forever on her cheek, haunting it.
“I continue to refuse,” Eureka said.
Delphine reached for Atlas’s hand, stopping him before he lunged at Eureka. She stroked the coarse red hairs on his forearm. “Give it time.”
“Time.” A note of sarcasm entered Atlas’s voice as he gazed down the wave toward the dark eye of sky. “The one luxury we lack.”
“I sense them building in her,” Delphine said. “They will come before sunrise.”
Atlas bowed his head. “I am chastised. No harm will come to her when she is with me from now on.”
“She is with me from now on,” Delphine corrected.
“You have your work to do,” Atlas said. “Let me look after her tonight. I have something for her, a surprise.”
From inside his waterfall prison, Brooks bellowed violently.
“Who’s in the cage today?” Atlas asked with a nod.
Delphine’s gaze checked Eureka’s before she said, “A boy I want to play with later.”