Sparks flew. Eureka couldn’t see Ovid’s face crushed beneath the stone; it was wedged deep into wet sand. She didn’t know if ghost robots died, but she could see that Ovid would never rise again.

As the victor rose from the orichalcum carnage, Ovid’s arm glided toward its opponent’s face and touched its cheek, a gentle caress. Then it jabbed two fingers under the robot’s jaw and twisted them into the infinity-shaped keyhole Eureka knew marked its neck. The ghost robot keeled over onto Ovid’s chest, as if in an embrace. Neither of them moved again.

“Delphine!” Atlas’s mouth shouted. “She will betray you—”

To quiet him, Eureka slashed Atlas’s cheek with the coral dagger.

At the far end of the beach, where the waveshop had once been, Delphine lay on her back. Waves lapped her long hair. Brooks straddled her, a shocking, erotic pose that sent jealousy surging through a fault between Eureka’s and Atlas’s minds.

But something separated Brooks’s and Delphine’s bodies. Eureka had to get closer to see what it was. She dove back into the ocean, drawing all of Atlas’s speed as she swam.

“Delphine!” Atlas shouted as soon as Eureka surfaced.

Her dagger slashed his other cheek. Blood rained upon the water.

At the sound of Atlas’s voice, Brooks lifted his gaze. His eyes darkened with a hatred Eureka reminded herself was not meant for her.

Brooks had pinned Delphine to the beach beneath the same waterfall that had once imprisoned him in her waveshop.

“Where is Eureka?” Brooks and Delphine asked in unison.

“She is dead,” Eureka said about herself to her best friend.

“No,” Brooks said. The waterfall fell from his hand. It smoked and boiled and disappeared into the ocean.

Delphine pushed him aside and splashed toward Atlas. Her skin was one great greenish-purple bruise. Her hair was a matted nest stuck to her cheeks, and her red lipstick had smeared to a bright pink smudge that reached her chin.

“I decide who is dead,” she said.

In her new body, Eureka towered over Delphine. She was amazed by how delicate, how fragile the ghostsmith appeared. She grabbed the back of Delphine’s head, drew her pink lips forward, and kissed her deeply on the mouth.

Eureka had no body to feel pain, but she could sense the rapturous ache explode in Atlas as his mind was blown back to the depths of his being. Then came the vision Eureka had feared since she decided to kiss Delphine to death:

A cave within a rainy mountain range. A fire bright in the hearth. Love thick as honey in the air. A baby cooing at her mother’s breast. And then, in a flash of lightning, the baby was gone. Wrapped in a fox-fur blanket, tucked in a young man’s arms. The man ran down the mountain, toward another world.

Leander … Come back … My baby …

Delphine’soriginal misery flowed into the recesses of Eureka’s mind. It was supposed to empower Eureka as she absorbed it, as it killed Delphine. That was what had happened when Eureka kissed the other girls. But this was different, deeply intimate, like losing Diana a second time.

Delphine was the origin of everything Eureka hated about herself. She was the source of Eureka’s darkness and her flood. She was also Eureka’s closest family, her Tearline and her blood. There was no choice to reject or embrace this connection—both were happening all the time. Eureka and Delphine belonged together. Both of them had to die.

She cradled the ghostsmith, kissed her harder, more passionately. She sensed Atlas’s body grow faint. Delphine’s eyelids twitched. Her veins lit up like lightning and her skin began to smoke. Charred flesh bubbled along her body like rivers of tar. Atlas screamed as his lips and hands felt the burns, but Eureka would not let him let go.

The ghostsmith fried from the inside. Eureka didn’t stop kissing her until she slackened in Atlas’s arms and, eventually, was still.

At last Eureka pulled Atlas’s lips away and dropped the ghostsmith’s sizzling, blackened body in the water. Pieces of her floated away. Eureka wondered briefly about the fate of Delphine’s ghost.

“There is one death the ghostsmith doesn’t get to decide,” Eureka said, and wiped Delphine’s kiss from her mouth.

Rough hands shoved her—shoved Atlas—so hard Eureka fell backward in the water. Brooks leapt on top of Atlas, wrapped his hands around the king’s neck. Eureka’s mind clouded from the lack of oxygen.

“Brooks!” she gasped. “It’s me.”

“I know who you are.” He plunged her underwater.

“It’s Eureka!” she spat when she surfaced. “I possessed Atlas like he possessed you. Stop! I’m about to—”

He plunged her down again. She didn’t want to fight him, but she had to. He could not drown Atlas before she cried the tears that would release the wasted dead. She kneed him fiercely in the groin. He reeled away and Eureka came up for air to find him on his knees, wheezing.

“If I weren’t me, would I know you were born at nine thirty-nine p.m. on the winter solstice after putting your mom through forty-one hours of labor?”

Brooks straightened, stared into Atlas’s eyes.

“Would I know you used to want to be an astronaut, because you planned on sailing around the world after college and didn’t want to reach an end to exploration? Would I know roller coasters scare you, though you’d never admit it, though you’ve sat next to me on every one I’ve ever ridden? Or that you kissed Maya Cayce at the Trejeans’ party?” She wiped Atlas’s wet face. “Cat told me. It doesn’t matter.”