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.
“If 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.
At last, they found a brooding Atlas leaning out the tallest tower toward the ocean. Wind rustled his wild red hair. Eureka steered Peggy toward him.
Crimson Devils stood guard behind the king in what appeared to be a strategy room. Behind the girls, old men with plaited golden hair and red velvet robes gathered around a water map.
Peggy’s coat was camouflaged against the travertine palace. She flew close to the walls, beating her moth wings, staying out of Atlas’s view, brushing Eureka’s legs against the palace every now and then.
“The arks are ready, sir,” a male voice called from the room. “The last survivors will board by first light. Perhaps it is time you let the ghostsmith know Eureka is at large?”
Atlas stared out at the sea. The pink sliver of sun in the east had grown into a copper band. “She will come back. We have unfinished business, and she knows it.”