Anger seized me without warning, and I set the Howler’s sights against my eye in an instant, training my gun on the approaching goddess. The first time I met Haidee my instinct had been to hesitate, my gut telling me she didn’t mean any harm. With Latona, it was the exact opposite.
Haidee shot me a warning look, but I refused to lower the Howler. Latona might be her mother, but she was the reason there was nothing here but sand.
“What foolishness is this, Haidee?” the older woman snapped. “Stop your silly tantrums and come home this instant!”
“Not until you hear me out!” Haidee yelled back. “I—we—did it! We went to the Great Abyss! Aeon is turning again, the way it’s supposed to be!”
“Oh, did you?” Latona’s eyes flared red; smoke curled around her as flames licked at the tips of her outstretched fingers. “Did you think the world had simply stopped on nothing more than a whim? Do you ever think about the consequences of your actions? You disobey me, flee into the desert with traitors, and now you think you hold all the answers to the universe? It will take months, years, to undo what you’ve unraveled in your arrogance. Save the world? You’ve just fashioned its coffin, hammered the final nail into place!”
I saw the words hit home, saw Haidee jerk back, visibly stung. “I wasn’t the one who destroyed Aeon! I was trying to save it!”
“And there will be consequences! Repercussions that extend beyond what you can even begin to imagine!”
“Maybe if you hadn’t lied to me about everything, I would have believed you! You lied about my father, about my sister! Why should I trust what you say now?”
Latona’s voice softened. “Whether you wish it or not, I am still your mother. I only want what’s best for you, even if you don’t understand.”
“And what about me?” Odessa stepped forward, and her hood fell to her shoulders.
Audible gasps of amazement from the soldiers. Latona’s eyes threatened to start out of her head; she grew pale, her hair leaching color. “Impossible,” she whispered. “A mirage. You’re nothing but a mirage. Odessa died years ago.”
“You’re wrong.” Odessa’s voice trembled, but she took her place beside Haidee, taking her sister’s hand. “I lived. I grew up on the other side of the world. I survived the Breaking. Haidee found me. My—I always believed you were dead.”
“Impossible!” Latona shouted. “What are these illusions you use against me, Haidee? Do you truly hate me, to hurt me this way?”
“No!” Haidee looked alarmed. “Mother, this is neither a mirage nor an illusion. This is Odessa, my twin. She was separated from us. She came from the city of Aranth, was raised among other survivors! They live in constant night just as we do in perpetual day, and she—”
“Aranth? How dare you.” Latona’s rage was frightening to behold. The sands before her churned, erupted into fire. Balls of flames leaped from her hands. “Aranth? How dare you say his name. How dare you say his name.”
I’d been in enough incanta fights to know what was coming. So did Lan. We grabbed Haidee and Odessa and dragged them away. Latona’s fireballs were aimed at Odessa, so Lan all but tucked the girl underneath her arm, dodging the flames thrown their way until they skidded to safety behind a large sand dune, Noelle following close behind.
The rest of the Golden army, fortunately, had horrible aim. I slid us down behind a second knoll, Haidee still protesting, as more shots flew past us. I let go of her and lifted my Howler, trying to will Fire patterns in faster. Despite their imprecision, the soldiers had more firepower and better weapons, and it was only a matter of time before one of them got lucky. Even as that thought crossed my mind, they were already pushing one of the large cannons forward, stacked to overflowing with glowfires.
“I wasn’t in danger!” Haidee yelped at me. “She won’t hurt me, no matter how angry she gets!”
“Might be, but can you really trust her flunkies not to hit you, even by accident? Your mother is on a rampage.” I glanced up at the sky, where bright sizzles of light gathered around the army, crackling with the promise of more violence. One of those bright balls of energy struck the sand nearby, and it felt like every hair on my skin stood on end from the impact.
“Lightning,” Lan called out to us. “We’ve seen more than our share of that where we come from.”
Haidee lashed out with an arm, and a giant wall of hardened sand rose up, a shield from the army’s volleys and the older goddess’s wrath. “She’s never done this before,” she said, sounding uncertain for the first time since returning. “She’s always kept her composure. I’ve only seen her lose her temper once.”
“Seeing Odessa unhinged her brain.” I shifted my Howler, opening the fire-gate in my eyes again.
“Don’t you dare, Arjun.”
“Of course not. But you better figure out how to calm her down before this whole place goes to hell in a kettle.”
“Your mirages hold no water!” Latona was gone. In her place was a madwoman. Her hair flew around her, sticking straight out of her head as she wove more and more incanta, the air steeped in their potency. “Odessa died at the Breaking!”
“Mother!” Haidee shouted. “Stop it!”
Lightning raked the ground before us, but Haidee’s sand walls took the brunt. Several more bolts struck a couple of the army’s rigs, setting them alight. The older goddess didn’t seem to care; it was as if she were fighting an invisible monster the rest of us couldn’t see, and we were all targets for her fury.
A cannon fired. A giant fireball hurtled toward the hill where Odessa, Lan, and Noelle had taken shelter. Haidee gestured, and a fresh wall shot out of the sand, breaking apart when the glowfire hit it, but stopping the attack.
“Odessa!” I heard Lan cry out, and saw the other twin rising to her feet, mimicking the combination of patterns that swirled around Latona. She clapped her hands together just as another arc of lightning crackled toward us, and her own lightning met it halfway. Both fizzled out in midair; the energy from the collision made my teeth hurt. There was too much of it everywhere.
Latona lowered her arms, rationality returning as she stared at her other daughter, as if finally seeing her for the first time. “It can’t be you.” The words came out slowly, fearful.
Odessa stared back, looking like she’d seen a mirage of her own. “You look exactly like Mother.”
The Sun Goddess drew back. “Don’t ever say that. She’s not your mother!”
“Mother, listen!” The sand wall crumbled, and Haidee rose. “Everything we knew was a lie. Odessa’s alive, and so is Asteria!”
A sudden rumbling noise made us all look up. I thought it was a fresh assault from the older Sun Goddess, but Latona’s expression was also one of genuine shock.
Dark clouds were spreading rapidly overhead; the rumblings grew louder.
A figure blurred into view in between us and the army; a human-shaped form bound in a cloak of gray, features obscured by a hood. I drew in a sharp breath. It was a mirage. More than that, it was a mirage of a Devoted, one of the many dead servants of the goddesses that wandered the Skeleton Coast. I swore I could feel its gaze on us.