He looked skyward. The crowds’ eyes followed. Eureka tried to hold off as long as possible, but curiosity betrayed her and her chin lifted toward the night sky. Something large and green and formless lowered toward her. When it was twenty feet overhead, Eureka saw it was a fleet of green Abyssinian lovebirds. There were thousands of them, carrying what looked like a huge golden birdcage toward the stage.
Though she couldn’t see beyond the birds, Eureka was gripped by the sudden premonition that Ander was inside the cage. She imagined the lightning cloak enfolding him, scrambling his mind with torturous memories, stripping his sadness of meaning. Her heart raced the way it had the first time they kissed.
The cage landed with a boom on the stage. Atlas clapped his hands three times. The birds scattered into the night. Inside the cage—
Stood Filiz.
“Well?” Atlas asked Eureka, his arms spread wide as if to receive her enormous gratitude. “My Devils picked her up along the inner moat this morning. We have all sorts of ways to torture trespassers, but I said, ‘No, no, she must be a friend of Eureka’s.’ ” He turned toward the crowd and yelled, “And any friend of Eureka’s is a friend of mine!”
Filiz’s hands were stuffed in the pockets of her tight black jeans. Her cheek was badly bruised, her T-shirt torn down the middle. Her chin was low, and her red hair hadn’t been washed in many miles. Her eyes rose slowly. No words found Eureka.
“I’m having trouble reading you, darling.” Atlas laughed for the audience’s benefit. “Is this what gratitude looks like in the so-called Waking World? Here I stage a beautiful reunion between you and your loved one, whoever she is. She followed you all the way here, so she’s clearly devoted. She has the most refined taste in hair color imaginable”—he waited for the crowd’s laughter to rise and fall—“and yet you look upon her as if she were offal. Has Delphine hardened you so much already?”
Eureka moved toward the cage. “How did you get here?”
If Filiz was in Atlantis, maybe Eureka’s loved ones were, too. No one should care enough about Eureka to follow her here, but she knew they did. Did Atlas have them imprisoned, too?
“Speak up, girl,” Atlas said. “We’d all like to know.”
Filiz swallowed, adjusted her black choker necklace. “My grandmother told tales of the Atlantean mountains where the gossipwitches live.” She spoke Atlantean, too. “Her grandmother told her that her grandmother told her”—she paused, swallowed, gazed into Eureka’s eyes—“that whoever visited those mountains would find the answer to life’s greatest question.”
“The Gossipwitch Mountains?” Atlas scoffed. “How stupidly rumors warp over millennia! Those mountains are for the unclean and undesired. Forget the wisdom of your ignorant elders. You are fortunate to have trespassed upon civilization.”
“I can see that now.” Filiz’s gaze bored into Eureka, who raised her eyebrows as if to ask, Are they here? Filiz nodded subtly and looked toward the mountains.
“Open the cage,” Eureka demanded.
“Your tears will unlock her cage.”
Eureka would never cry to save Filiz. Filiz knew it. Didn’t Atlas?
Again Eureka recalled Delphine’s words that Atlas’s heart wasn’t tuned for love. In fact, he seemed to completely misapprehend it. He couldn’t see what others saw so clearly. Atlas thought love was his subjects’ affected adoration.
A flash of self-consciousness crossed his face as Eureka studied him. He drew a torch from its holder at the edge of the stage. The gossipwitches’ amethysts glowed at the base of its flame. Atlas thrust the torch inside the cage. Filiz screamed as tendrils of flame found her skin.
Atlas withdrew the torch and looked at Eureka. He tipped the flame. “Again?”
“Oh, how I wish I were in the mountains my elders spoke of,” Filiz said, rubbing the burnt places on her arms, staring hard at Eureka.
Could she trust Filiz? The two of them shared a murderous recent history. Was this a trick?
“If you like being burned, please continue discussing the mountains.” Atlas lifted the torch, preparing to strike Filiz again. Eureka stepped between them.