“I! Feel! Nothing!” Solon flung out his arms and shouted at the waterfall. “No joy. No desire. No empathy. And certainly not”—he stared at her entrancingly—“love.” Solon tapped her bag containing The Book of Love. “Don’t you know the story of Leander and Delphine?”
“You mean Leander and Selene?” Eureka asked. Selene was her ancestor; Leander was Ander’s ancestor. Long ago, they had been deeply in love and escaped Atlantis so they could love each other freely—but they were shipwrecked and separated by a storm.
Solon shook his head. “Before Selene, there was Delphine.”
Eureka remembered. “Okay, but Leander left Delphine because he wanted Selene.” It sounded like locker-room gossip.
Solon had moved to a cupboard behind the table. He poured himself a shot of ruby-colored port. “You’re familiar with the expression, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’?”
Eureka nodded. “Ander, what is he talking about?”
“Imagine a sorceress scorned,” Solon said. “Imagine the blackest heart scorched into deeper blackness. Quadruple it. That is Delphine scorned.”
“This is not the way Eureka should—” Ander protested.
“I’m just getting to the good part,” Solon said. “Delphine couldn’t stop Leander from falling in love with another, but she could ensure that his love would lead to misery. She cast a spell on him, one inherited by all his future descendants. Your boyfriend and I both endure under that spell: love drains our life away. Love ages us rapidly, decades in a moment.”
Eureka looked from Ander to Solon and back again. They both were just boys. “I don’t get it. You said you were once in love—”
“Oh, I was,” Solon said fiercely. He swallowed the last drop of port. “There was no way to stop our love. It’s fate—Seedbearer boys always fall for Tearline girls. We have Tearline fever.”
Eureka looked at Ander. “This has happened other times?”
“No,” Solon said sarcastically. “All of this began the moment you started paying attention to it. Good God, girls are dumb.”
“It’s different with us,” Ander said. “We’re not like—”
“Not like me?” Solon said. “Not like a murderer?”
It hit Eureka then, what had happened to Byblis. She shivered, then began to sweat. “You killed her.”
Seedbearers were supposed to kill Tearline girls. Ander was supposed to have killed Eureka. But Solon had actually gone through with it. He had murdered his true love.
Ander reached for Eureka. “What we feel for each other is real.”
“What happened with Byblis?” Eureka asked.
“After one astonishing and amorous month together”—Solon leaned back in his chair, hands clasped over his chest—“we were sitting at a riverside café, our bodies turned toward each other, much like yours are now.” Solon gestured at Eureka’s and Ander’s knees brushing under the table.
“I reached my feeble hand across the table to caress her flowing hair,” Solon said. “I stared into her midnight eyes. I gathered all my waning strength and I told her I loved her.” He held out his hand and swallowed, drawing his fingers into a fist. “Then I broke her neck, as I had been raised to do.” He stared into space, his fist still raised. “I was an old man then, decrepit with the age that love had brought me.”
“That’s horrible,” Eureka said.
“But there’s a happy ending,” Solon said. “As soon as she was gone, my arthritis faded. My cataracts melted away. I could walk upright. I could run.” He smirked at Ander. “But I’m sure my story sounds nothing like yours.” He touched Ander’s eyes. “Not even in the pitter-patter of your crow’s-feet.”
Ander swatted Solon’s hand.
“Is it true?” Eureka asked.
Ander avoided her eyes. “Yes.”
“You weren’t going to tell me.” Eureka stared at his face, noticing lines she hadn’t seen before. She imagined him hobbling and wizened, walking feebly with a cane.