“You always have liked to make them seethe first,” Atlas said. Eureka couldn’t tell if he was jealous or amused.
“I will destroy you!” Brooks shouted, his voice muffled by the sound of the waterfall.
“Oh, he’ll be fun.” Atlas chuckled.
Eureka’s teeth clenched. Atlas’s laughter made her hands itch to kill. She weighed her options. Defend her friend now and lose—or bide her time?
Atlas stepped closer to Brooks, surveying the waterfall cage. Then his fist plunged into it. The barrier curved pliantly around his fist, likely allowing Atlas to strike Brooks in the stomach, though Eureka couldn’t see her friend through the waterfall. When Brooks howled, Eureka felt his pain in her own gut, like a twin.
Then came a dull shatter, like a hammer against a block of ice. She knew Brooks had tried to fight back, but his fist couldn’t penetrate the water. His cage didn’t work that way.
“Was that necessary?” Delphine asked, bored.
Eureka’s arms wanted to enclose the waterfall, to cradle Brooks. But she could show no reaction or Atlas would guess who was inside.
He stood before her now with his mesmerizing redwood eyes and sharp white teeth. He fingered a lock of her wet hair. “I have a present for you, Eureka. An apology for your experience with the lightning. With Delphine’s permission, I will take you to it.”
“You have nothing I want.”
“Perhaps no thing. Perhaps someone.”
“What sickness are you up to?” Delphine looked up from her wheel. The music’s pace quickened and Eureka became afraid.
Atlas shook his head and slipped an arm around Eureka’s waist as he steered her toward the wave’s exit. “I want to see the amazement on your face.”
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Atlas paused at the midpoint of the second bridge they’d crossed since leaving the waveshop. At either entrance, two giant statues of his likeness drew long silver swords on each other.
When empty, both bridges stretched low across their wide moats, but when tread upon, they rose into towering arches, offering spectacular views of the city ahead.
“I can give you a beautiful life, Eureka,” Atlas said. “You always wanted something more extraordinary than the bayou—didn’t you? If you help me, I will welcome you here. The cost is tiny, the reward endless.”
The nearly full moon hung over the skyline of Atlantis, which glittered like a galaxy fashioned into buildings. They were shaped like roller coasters, with gem-colored swimming pools slanting down their roofs. Parks burst through the city’s seams, astonishing flora growing so rapidly that the topography was ever changing. Commuter trains swam through the sky. Behind them, the Gossipwitch Mountains rose starkly.
“I have lived in a hundred other bodies,” Atlas said, “seen a hundred other worlds. None came close to my Atlantis. Imagine if we had never sunk …”
Eureka leaned against the bridge’s orichalcum railing. Now that she knew how the precious metal was mined, everything made from orichalcum looked like rotting flesh. “But you did sink.”
“That is literally ancient history.”
“Alternative history, you mean. Most people don’t believe you ever existed.”
Atlas forced a bitter laugh. “Most people no longer exist.”
Looking into the moat below, Eureka saw Delphine’s face in her reflection. “How did you forgive her?”
“What?”
“If Delphine had never cried that tear, you never would have sunk.”
“Did she say something about me, about that?”
The time it took Eureka to think of an answer made Atlas squirm. “You must really love her, that’s all I mean.”
As Atlas’s eyes probed Eureka’s for information, she understood that his relationship with Delphine had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with fear. Maybe no one else could see it, but Delphine ruled the king.