Then came a dull shatter, like a hammer against a block of ice. She knew Brooks had tried to fight back, but his fist couldn’t penetrate the water. His cage didn’t work that way.

“Was that necessary?” Delphine asked, bored.

Eureka’s arms wanted to enclose the waterfall, to cradle Brooks. But she could show no reaction or Atlas would guess who was inside.

He stood before her now with his mesmerizing redwood eyes and sharp white teeth. He fingered a lock of her wet hair. “I have a present for you, Eureka. An apology for your experience with the lightning. With Delphine’s permission, I will take you to it.”

“You have nothing I want.”

“Perhaps no thing. Perhaps someone.”

“What sickness are you up to?” Delphine looked up from her wheel. The music’s pace quickened and Eureka became afraid.

Atlas shook his head and slipped an arm around Eureka’s waist as he steered her toward the wave’s exit. “I want to see the amazement on your face.”

“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Atlas paused at the midpoint of the second bridge they’d crossed since leaving the waveshop. At either entrance, two giant statues of his likeness drew long silver swords on each other.

When empty, both bridges stretched low across their wide moats, but when tread upon, they rose into towering arches, offering spectacular views of the city ahead.

“I can give you a beautiful life, Eureka,” Atlas said. “You always wanted something more extraordinary than the bayou—didn’t you? If you help me, I will welcome you here. The cost is tiny, the reward endless.”

The nearly full moon hung over the skyline of Atlantis, which glittered like a galaxy fashioned into buildings. They were shaped like roller coasters, with gem-colored swimming pools slanting down their roofs. Parks burst through the city’s seams, astonishing flora growing so rapidly that the topography was ever changing. Commuter trains swam through the sky. Behind them, the Gossipwitch Mountains rose starkly.

“I have lived in a hundred other bodies,” Atlas said, “seen a hundred other worlds. None came close to my Atlantis. Imagine if we had never sunk …”

Eureka leaned against the bridge’s orichalcum railing. Now that she knew how the precious metal was mined, everything made from orichalcum looked like rotting flesh. “But you did sink.”

“That is literally ancient history.”

“Alternative history, you mean. Most people don’t believe you ever existed.”

Atlas forced a bitter laugh. “Most people no longer exist.”

Looking into the moat below, Eureka saw Delphine’s face in her reflection. “How did you forgive her?”

“What?”

“If Delphine had never cried that tear, you never would have sunk.”

“Did she say something aboutme, about that?”

The time it took Eureka to think of an answer made Atlas squirm. “You must really love her, that’s all I mean.”

As Atlas’s eyes probed Eureka’s for information, she understood that his relationship with Delphine had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with fear. Maybe no one else could see it, but Delphine ruled the king.

They walked down the bridge in silence and were greeted by a gathering of Atlanteans. Twinkling city lights illuminated the Atlanteans’ made-up faces, their exquisite jewelry and clothes. Atlas gave a gentle wave and the crowd broke into applause.

“Is this your queen, sir?” a woman’s voice called out in Atlantean. A bright blue heptagonal hat shielded her features.

Atlas raised Eureka’s hand high in the air. “Isn’t she marvelous? Everything I deserve?” His false smile deepened, as if seeing Eureka through his subjects’ eyes. “She could use a scrub, of course. And these clothes must be burned and never spoken of again. But where better to shop for replacements than in our city?”

As the crowd applauded, Atlas gestured toward a man at the front who was holding up a small black box.

“There he is! Smile for the royal holographer!” Atlas slipped an arm around Eureka’s waist and held her close. She could feel his rapid breathing. “Imagine your dead friend stands in my place, and smile.”

The crowd cheered even louder at the first forced peek of Eureka’s smile. The applause was deafening, but their expressions were vacant as they clapped. She loathed them. Did they not know about the Filling? She wanted all of them turned into ghosts. They were either idiots or as selfish as their king.

The mob circled around her as she and Atlas passed a cobbler, a market, and a hologram shop, each with lifelike wax statues of Atlas marking their doorsteps, advertising their wares.

“I bought my sole at Belinda’s,” a prerecorded Atlas panned through a speaker outside the cobbler’s.

“Nothing turns me on like Atlantean ardorfruit,” his voice blared through the speaker above an Atlas statue about to bite into a golden triangular-shaped fruit. “Tender. Tangy. Take some home tonight.”

Atlas steered Eureka into a central triangle surrounded by grand and gleaming buildings. Flags of many shades of blue hung from a hundred eaves, cascading in the wind.

“They love me,” Atlas told Eureka without a hint of irony. They mounted a stage that appeared to be floating. Half a dozen Devils lined its perimeter.

“What’s the penalty if they don’t?” Eureka asked.

“Delphine could never connect with the public like this.” Atlas glanced at Eureka, adding, “Her powers are remarkable, no one is arguing that, but without me, she’s just a witch in a wave.”