He pulls his hands down his cheeks and sighs deeply. “I didn’t understand it before, but I do now. The girl is right. She wasn’t Sookhee. It wasn’t her.”

“Who was it, then?” Appa demands, his hands placed protectively on Eomma’s shoulder and mine.

“The Cave Bear Goddess,” Mr. Pyo whispers. “It was her.”

We’re all stunned into silence.

Impossible.

Emmett and I have met the goddess. She is kind and benevolent. Yeah, she may have been a bit quirkier than I’d expected, but she’d given me the chance to save Hattie’s life and become a Gom in my own right. She’s the Gom’s patron goddess. Would she really go to the length of possessing one of her Gom subjects to steal the sunstone ax? Mr. Pyo is just playing with us. Messing with our heads.

Then again…

Emmett’s mom had said that she’d been betrayed by the one she had trusted most. Could she have been talking about her patron goddess? I mean, it’s unbelievable, but everything that’s happened over the last few days has been the definition of unbelievable. It’s not that much out of the realm of possibility that the Cave Bear Goddess has been playing with us mortals this entire time.

“Blasphemy!” Eomma cries.

“How dare you!” Appa shouts. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

But Mr. Pyo has started to piece things together in his mind, and he’s now on a roll, discovering truths as he says them out loud. “Yes, of course! The eight artifacts are the fallen fragments of the dark sun and moon, which means they’re the physical manifestations of the six goddesses’ original sin. It’s only logical the goddess would want them all destroyed.” He slaps his thigh and groans. “She was never going to give it to me. I should have known!”

Sora must be at the end of her tether, because she breaks the remaining two pieces of the baseball bat into tiny splinters with another snap of her fingers. “Stop mumbling. Speak so we can understand!”

Frightened, Mr. Pyo nods frantically. “Don’t you see? The goddesses believe that if all the fallen artifacts are destroyed, their original sin, too, will be wiped away. They are assuming their punishment will be rendered null and void and they will have open, unfettered access to the three realms once more.”

Emmett and I look at each other, trying to understand what we’re being told. We’d learned about the fallen stars being symbols of the original sin, and how Mago Halmi had locked the six goddesses in the Godrealm as punishment for their actions. That’s why the gifted clans were born—to do the will of the goddesses on Earth. Is that what Mr. Pyo is talking about?