But Filiz and the Poet had gone home, and everyone else was asleep: William and Claire shared a blanket at the foot of Eureka’s bed. Cat was passed out on her side next to Eureka, singing in her sleep as she had always done, since their earliest sleepovers. Tonight she softly slurred the bridge from Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.”
On Eureka’s other side, Ander slept on his stomach, his face buried in a pillow. Even in his dreams he disappeared. She laid her head close to his for a moment. She inhaled his scent and felt the warm power of his breath. Dim light displayed faint lines around his eyes and silver-blond hairs around his temple. Had they been there that morning? Eureka didn’t know. When you spent so much time looking at someone it was hard to measure how they changed.
Yesterday, the idea that love aged Ander appalled Eureka. But it wouldn’t matter now—Ander couldn’t possibly love her anymore. No one could. She wouldn’t let them. Freedom from love meant freedom to focus on getting to the Marais, damming her flood, finishing Atlas—and liberating Brooks.
What would Brooks think of what Eureka had done to Seyma? For the first time, she was glad that he was gone.
“I know,” Solon’s voice insisted. “I will deliver the last piece, but it’s complicated. Delicate.”
Eureka rose from her blanket and edged toward the hanging rug separating the guest room from the salon. The gossipwitches’ torch burned low, balanced between two stalagmites. Its amethyst stones provided inexhaustible and intelligent fuel: the flame adjusted itself during the day, burning brightest just before bedtime, soft as candlelight when everyone retired.
A voice answered Solon:
“I turned my back on you.”
A shiver went down Eureka’s spine. It was her father’s voice.
Eureka flew into the salon, expecting to find Dad sitting at the broken table, cracking an egg into a bowl and smiling, eager to explain the stunt he’d pulled.
The room was empty. The waterfall roared.
“Solon?” Eureka called.
A dim light glowed from the staircase that led to the cave’s lower level. Solon’s cloistered workshop lay below.
“I turned my back on you,” the voice repeated, drifting up the stairs. It sounded so much like Dad’s that Eureka stumbled as she hurried toward it.
At the base of the stairs, Solon sat on a spun silk rug under a hanging glass lantern. Someone sat across from him, his face turned away from Eureka. He was hard to make out clearly in the shadowy light, but Eureka knew it wasn’t Dad. He looked as young as Solon, with a shaved head, broad shoulders, and a narrow waist. He was naked.
As Eureka reached the bottom stair, the boy’s head turned toward her, and her breath caught in her throat. Something about the strange boy reminded her of—
“Dad?”
Tears glistened in the corner of Solon’s eyes. “He fixed Ovid. Until now I wasn’t sure it would work. There was gossip, of course, but one can never trust a witch. And anyone else who might remember is either dead or in the Sleeping World.” He wiped his eyes. “Your father fixed it. Come and see.”
Solon took Eureka’s hand. She sat next to him on the rug, across from the naked boy. When she saw it more clearly, she realized it wasn’t human—it was a gleaming machine crafted in the shape of a very fit boy.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Solon asked.
Eureka’s eyes roved over the machine’s anatomically impressive body, but when she looked at the robot’s face, she found it hard to breathe. It was youthful, like an ancient Greek statue—but its features were unmistakably those of her father.
Heavy-lidded eyes gazed at her with paternal love. A hint of stubble stood along its chin. The robot smiled, and the crease along its nose was the one that Dad had passed down to Eureka and the twins.
“Eureka, meet Ovid, limited-edition orichalcum robot from Atlantis,” Solon said. “Ovid, meet Eureka, the one who’s going to take you home.”
Eureka blinked at Solon, then at the robot, who extended its hand. She shook it, amazed to find it pliant like a real hand, with a firm, confident grasp.