The older woman smiled faintly. “You are presuming,” she said, “that those few familiar with the secret would put the goddesses’s best interests before their own. I only learned the worst of it during the Breaking. The surviving goddesses often left the day-to-day administration of Aeon to the Devoted. They ruled on her behalf. In hindsight, I should have known better, should have questioned the strangeness of such a hierarchy. But I was too invested in my own comfort to protest.”
Arjun swore angrily. “They could pass off the surviving goddess to the rest of the people like she’d been the only one all along, and no one would be the wiser. Those lying scum.”
“Everything changed with Latona and Asteria. They found out about each other, and from that instant they broke every rule.” A thin smile graced Salla’s lips. “They had both snuck off to the city on their own, unaware of the other’s existence, and returned together, holding hands. Devika’s wrath knew no bounds, but they refused to leave each other’s side.”
Arjun’s face was set. “So my mother was responsible for all of this.”
“Your mother?” I asked.
“Devika. The leader of Asteria’s Devoted,” he said candidly.
The woman sighed. “She forbade the goddesses from seeing each other, yes. And when they disobeyed her, she tried to physically separate them, by sending Latona away.”
“What did my father say about all this?” Arjun asked, tight-lipped.
“He had passed away when Devika was pregnant with you. He was a low-ranked Devoted, but I knew very little of him. Devika didn’t like to talk about her husband. I’m sorry, Arjun. This is why I never told you much about your mother over the years.”
“Did she have a Fire gate, too?” Odessa asked softly. She looked frail and vulnerable and sad, and all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around her and swear that everything would be all right, though I feared I might not be able to keep that promise.
A part of me was also furious at these people, at all these horrible decisions that had been made for the twins long before they’d even been born. Knowing that expressing my anger right now would be useless was all that kept me from punching the wall, from yelling at Salla.
“Yes,” Salla answered Odessa. “She was a rare Firesmoker who could wield blue fire.”
“Like me.” Arjun didn’t sound surprised. From the way his jaw clenched, it was almost like he was expecting it.
“Back then, those who could command blue fire were exalted above the rest. It was believed to be a sign of Inanna’s favor. In Inanna’s time, most served as the vestal virgins of her temple, her closest confidantes.”
A loud snort came from Imogen, who was eavesdropping. “Arjun doesn’t strike me as someone you’d call a vestal virgin.”
“Shut up, Immie,” Arjun growled.
“What I don’t understand,” I said, “is how Latona and Asteria went from being as close as sisters can be to attempting to murder one another.”
“Neither Asteria nor Latona knew that one of them had to die. They didn’t know generations of twins had come before them, or what had befallen them. They thought they were the first, that a civil war might break out, with factions springing up around each of them. I’m not too knowledgeable about the details, but the sisters had a personal falling-out, and Latona left the city, giving up all claims to rule. She was already pregnant by then. The goddess with the mark was supposed to have carried on the line, so you two were unexpected.”
I frowned. “Wouldn’t the prophecy written at Brighthenge have foretold all this?”
“It said that Latona and Asteria would change the world, but only in the vaguest terms. Your prophecy held more details than theirs.”
“Who—” Odessa’s voice wobbled. “Who made these predictions?”
“They’ve been etched within Brighthenge since Inanna’s time, I’m told. Yours and Haidee’s were the last of them all.”
The last of the prophecies, implying that there would be no other goddesses to come after them. Odessa grew pale at the revelation; Haidee, angry and resolute.
“The Devoted under Devika planned to kill Latona and claim she had died of natural causes, hoping their estrangement would prevent Asteria from investigating too closely. Devika even tried to turn them further against each other, claiming that one twin intended to have the other killed.”
“That explains the letters,” Haidee said quietly. “My father realized they were being lied to.”
Salla turned away. “My conscience finally got the better of me, though I had little power to stop the rites. Asteria was still too closely guarded. But I managed to send a letter to Latona. I warned her of what the Devoted had planned. She and your father rushed to Brighthenge to warn Asteria. Forgive me, Your Holinesses.”
“You tried to save our mothers,” Haidee said softly. “There is no fault here to forgive. Thank you.”
“I told Latona not to come. We’d learned that the final galla required your father’s life, and I thought it better that he stay away—though in the end, they ignored the advice. Devika’s machinations had worked well on Latona. Asteria had always been more studious, more at ease with people, while Latona was awkward and preferred solitude. Devika was good at playing on her insecurities. It crossed my mind afterward that she might have deliberately caused the Breaking . . . I hoped it was not so. But when she built the Golden City and drove many people out into the desert, delighting in her power as she did, I knew. I swore I would fight her for Asteria’s sake.”
I squeezed Odessa’s hand gently. The goddess had been quiet this whole time, looking at the floor and biting worriedly at her lip. “Are you all right?”
She squeezed back. “Mother Salla,” she finally said, looking up at the woman. “If you know about the sacrificial rites, then you surely know about the ritual involving the galla.”
The older Firesmoker’s expression changed. “I didn’t then. I was at the temple, but was not allowed to bear witness to the rite firsthand—a decision that might have saved my life. I only remember a strange light. I saw Latona stumbling into it, and then it, too, encompassed me. And then I was in the desert.”
“The portal,” Haidee murmured, her mechanika mind still hunting for solutions. “So many people dying—it must have triggered both portals inadvertently, without anyone meaning to. . . .” She trailed off, shuddered.
“It was whispered even back then, how those portals required human life to open. They were allegedly the portals that Inanna had used to gain access to the Cruel Kingdom. None of us had ever dared try it before.”
“How did you two do it?” Imogen asked the twins. “Did you just cast an incanta and command the world to start up again, or . . . ?”
Haidee and Odessa looked at each other. “I don’t know,” Haidee confessed. “We weren’t thinking about it when it happened. We—”
“—reached out toward each other, and everything moved,” Odessa said. “And the instant we touched—”
“—some strange power sparked between us, like we could do anything. We wanted to cleanse the Abyss and heal Aeon. But then we—”