Esme put the parchment on her lap. She opened her eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Eureka said.
“I shall put it plainly for you: the years have forged a false history of your lineage. Selene was a pretty girl and a decent horticulturist, but she was not your matriarch. You are descended from the grandmother of all dark sorcery. The Tearline springs from Delphine.”
Eureka opened her mouth to speak but found no words.
“Her tears of scorn and heartbreak sank Atlantis,” Esme said. “Yours will raise it.”
“No, that’s not what happened.”
“Because you don’t want it to be what happened?” Esme asked. “If the hero does not match the story, it is the hero, not the story, who must be rewritten.”
Eureka’s temples throbbed. “But I didn’t cry from scorn and—”
“Heartbreak?” Esme asked. “Are you certain?”
“You’re lying,” Eureka said.
“I lie as frequently and as convincingly as I can. But then there is the matter of the Glimmering, which reveals only that which is truer than the truth. Do you happen to recall your reflection?”
The memory of that cold, cruel face flashed before Eureka’s eyes and she knew that the girl in the reflection wasn’t Maya Cayce. Her gaze had been wiser, darker, deeper. Her smile icier than that of even the most frigid high school queen. Eureka had been looking at Delphine. Her body tensed. She imagined squeezing Esme’s cheeks until no laughter could escape her pretty, painted mouth.
She blinked, surprised by the violence of her fantasy.
Esme smiled. “Delphine is who you come from, why you are the way you are. Dark-hearted. Mind as deadly as a nest of vipers. You are capable of great and terrible things, but you must free yourself of the bonds of love and kindness holding you back. Come with us. We will show you the way to the Marais. Then you will show us the way to Atlantis—”
“No.” Eureka rose and stepped backward.
“You’ll change your mind.” Esme followed Eureka to the doorway. She stroked the twisted end of her pipe. “Funny, isn’t it? Everyone thinks the bad guy is Atlas.…”
“Even Atlas thinks the bad guy is Atlas!” a witch in the background howled.
“When, actually”—Esme leaned forward to whisper in Eureka’s bad ear—“it’s you.”
23
OVID’S METAMORPHOSES
Eureka could barely see Ander through the rain as he ran from the entrance to the Bitter Cloud and caught her in his arms.
“Where have you been?”
Everything was different about him. His hair was wet, his clothes soaked and stuck to his skin. His eyes were a pure, crystal-clear blue, where they used to be clouded by a lovely melancholy.
Was this how Ander wore joy? He looked fantastic, but far removed from the brooding, unreachable boy she’d fallen for back home.
That boy would have hated that she’d run off to an artemisia-drenched witches’ lair. This boy’s embrace said: All that matters is you’re here.
The truth had done this to Ander. He knew who he was—or who he wasn’t—and it looked good on him.
“I have something for you,” Ander said.
“Ander, wait”—any word not confessing her secret was a lie—“before you—”
He shook his head. “This can’t wait.”
His arms curved around her back and pulled her body against his. He tipped her backward and pressed his lips to hers. The salty rain flooded between their lips. This was what heartbreak tasted like.
Eureka felt like an imposter. She couldn’t breathe and she didn’t want to. What if she could die while kissing him, allow his love to suffocate her? Then he’d never know who she really was, she would never have to face the grand lie she had become, and the rest of the half-drowned world could go on paying for her pride.
She touched the corners of his eyes where she’d found wrinkles days ago. “Your face.”