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"Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" Critias used to takeoften made the worshippers in the pews around me cry It is unspeakably beautiful, and I can make out twelve-year-old Eureka’s voice perfectly, hear how her words are affected by her braces I want to swoon, to fall down to the ground and scream

"Tell us what you feel," Albion says

Eureka’s voice is so steady I’th to adopt a monotone "I’m very tired Is it a lullaby?"

I do not want to know the person I sound like

"You’re doing fine," Albion says "You’re nearly done We want to show you onebefore he turns the photograph around I try to look at it without seeing it It’s a close-up of Eureka se tank top and her hair has been lightened by the sun Her eyes are more alive than mine will ever be

It’s obvious I’ve failed I will never give her up, never grow out of love Why can’t my family see that love is the start and end of me?

"Well, Ander?" Albion says "Tell us what comes to mind"

"Demise," I nearly choke

Around ," Chora says "We accept that you are ready"

"Are you ready, Ander?" asp

"Good" Albion clapsemptiness into me "It is time to kill Eureka"

If you enjoyed this special TEARDROP story, look for Lauren Kate’s new series, TEARDROP, the epic saga of Eureka Boudreaux, a seventeen-year-old girl whose tears have the power to raise the lost continent of Atlantis

Here’s a sneak peek at the first novel in the series

Excerpt copyright © 2013 by Lauren Kate All rights reserved Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York

1

EUREKA

In the stillness of the sed it--a habit since the accident, which had left her half deaf It didn’t help Across the rooauzy white blouse, olive-green skirt, and very fine, upswept blond hair appeared in the lamplit space

"Eureka?" Her low voice co of a fish tank that featured a neon plastic scuba diver buried to his knees in sand but showed no sign of containing fish

Eureka looked around the vacant lobby, wishing to invoke some other, invisible Eureka to take her place for the hour

"I’m Dr Landry Please coo, Eureka had survived an armada of therapists A life ruled by three adults who couldn’t agree on anything proved far messier than one ruled by just two Dad had doubted the first analyst, an old-school Freudian, almost as much as Mom had hated the second, a heavy-lidded psychiatrist who doled out numbness in pills Then Rhoda, Dad’s neife, caame to try the school counselor, and the acupuncturist, and the angerfamily therapist, in whose office Dad had never felt less like family She’d actually half liked the last shrink, who’d touted a faraiss boarding school--until her ht wind of it and threatened to take Dad to court

Eureka noted her new therapist’s taupe leather slip-ons She’d sat on the couch across from many similar pairs of shoes Female doctors did this little trick: they slipped off their flats at the beginning of a session, slid their feet back into thenal the end They all must have read the saentler on the patient than si ti: a long ainst the shuttered o upholstered chairs opposite a coffee table with a bowl of those coffee gold-wrapped candies, a rug stitched with different-colored footprints A plug-in air freshenersmell like cinnamon, which Eureka did noton the floor with a loud thump--honors textbooks were bricks--then slid do on the couch

"Nice place," she said "You should get one of those swinging pendulums with the silver balls My last doctor had one Maybe a water cooler with the hot and cold taps"

"If you’d like some water, there’s a pitcher by the sink I’d be happy to--"

"Never mind" Eureka had already let slip more words than she’d intended to speak the whole hour She was nervous She took a breath and reerected her walls She reminded herself she was a Stoic