“He would find us very valuable,” Chora said.

Starling flicked a slug of mud from a pleat on her dress. “You are suggesting we align ourselves with Atlas?”

“I believe Chora is suggesting that we blackmail the Evil One.” Critias laughed.

“Call it what you like,” Chora said. “It’s a plan. We track Ander, take possession of any tears; perhaps we generate more. Then we use them to seduce Atlas, who will have us to thank for the great gift of his freedom.”

Thunder rattled the earth. Black smoke twisted up out of the cordon’s vent.

“You’re insane,” Critias said.

“She’s a genius,” Albion said.

“I’m afraid,” Starling said.

“Fear is for losers.” Chora sat on her haunches and stoked the fire with a wet stick. “How much time until the full moon?”

“Ten nights,” Starling said.

“Time enough”—Albion smirked into the distance—“for everything to change in the last word.”

2

LANDFALL

The silver surface of the ocean danced above Eureka’s head. Her legs fluttered toward it—the urge to pass from water into air was irresistible—but she stopped herself.

This wasn’t the warm Vermilion Bay back home. Eureka was treading inside a transparent sphere in a dark, chaotic ocean on the other side of the world. The sphere and the voyage Eureka had made in it were possible because of the thunderstone pendant she wore around her neck. Eureka had inherited the thunderstone when her mother, Diana, died, but she’d only recently discovered its magic: when she wore the necklace underwater, a balloon-shaped sphere bloomed around her.

The reason the thunderstone shield encased her now bewildered Eureka. She had done the one thing she was not supposed to do. She had cried.

She’d grown up knowing tears were forbidden, a betrayal to Diana, who had slapped Eureka the last time she’d cried, eight years before, when she was nine and her parents split up.

Never, ever cry again.

But Diana had never told her why.

Then she died, sending Eureka on a quest for answers. She discovered that her unshed tears were connected to a world trapped beneath the ocean. If that Sleeping World rose, it would destroy the Waking World, her world, which she was learning to love.

She couldn’t help what happened next. She had stepped into her backyard to find her four-year-old twin siblings, William and Claire, beaten and gagged by monsters that called themselves Seedbearers. She had watched Dad’s second wife, Rhoda, die trying to save the twins. She had lost her oldest friend, Brooks, to a force too dark to fathom.

The tears came. Eureka wept.

It was a deluge. The storm clouds in the sky and the bayou behind her house joined with her sorrow and exploded. Everything and everyone had been swept up in a wild, newsalty sea. Miraculously, the thunderstone shield had also saved the lives of the people she cared about most.

Eureka looked at them now, pitching unsteadily beside her. William and Claire in their matching Superman pajamas. Her once-dashing father, Trenton, with his lightning-struck heart yearning for the wife who’d fallen from the sky like a raindrop made of blood and bone. Eureka’s friend Cat, whom she’d never seen look so afraid. And the boy who with one magic kiss the night before had gone from crush to confidant—Ander.

Eureka’s shield had saved them from drowning, but Ander was the one who’d guided them across the ocean, toward what he promised was sanctuary. Ander was a Seedbearer, but he didn’t want to be. He had turned away from his cruel family, toward Eureka, vowing to help her. As a Seedbearer, his breath, called a Zephyr, was mightier than the strongest wind. It had carried them across the Atlantic at an impossible speed.

Eureka had no idea how long the journey had taken, or how far they had come. At this depth, the ocean was unchangingly dark and cold, and Cat’s cell phone, the only one that had made it into the shield, had died a while ago. All Eureka had to measure time were the white creases at the corners of Cat’s mouth, the rumbling of Dad’s stomach, and Claire’s crouching squat dance, which meant she really had to pee.

Ander propelled the shield closer to the surface with a crawl stroke. Eureka was eager to break free of the shield and terrified of what she’d find on the other side. The world had changed. Her tears had changed it. Under the ocean, they were safe. Above it, they could drown.

Eureka held still as Ander brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.

“Almost there,” he said.

They had already discussed how they would make landfall. Ander explained the ocean surges would be treacherous, so their exit from the shield had to be calculated. He had stolen a special anchor from the Seedbearers that would grip a rock and steady them—but then they had to pass through the limits of the shield.

Claire was the key. Where everyone else’s touch met stone-like resistance, Claire’s hands passed through the shield’s edges like a wildfire through fog. She bobbed on her heels, swirling her hands against its surface, finger-painting an invisible escape. Her wrists passed in and out of the shield the way ghosts reached through doors.

Without Claire’s power, the shield would pop like a bubble when it crested the surface and touched air. Everyone inside it would be scattered like ashes across the sea.

So once Ander found a suitable rock, Claire would become their pioneer. Her hands would pass through the shield and hook the anchor on the stone. Until the others were ashore, Claire’s arms would remain partway in and partway out of the shield, keeping it open for their passage, keeping it from shattering on the wind.