The Golden Chalice

✰✦✰ Chapter Twenty-Seven ✰✦✰

✰✦✰ Chapter Twenty-Seven ✰✦✰
" Tricked "

THE FOUR OF us were running up the stairs onto the deck, being led by Sarinne, and eventually came to see a very angry looking Miles who was shooting at the earrings from a short distance. The bullets pinged against the floor and the diamonds themselves were falling apart slowly.

Darius stood there too, shouting at Miles to stop as he tried to stop him from destroying them. We probably needed them to get to our next clue, and Miles demolishing them wouldn't help us get far. In fact, all it did was make me question my reasons for having brought him along.

"What the hell does he think he's doing?" snapped Jacks, stalking forward.

We all followed.

"No idea," said Sarinne. "He claimed he'd been up all night trying to figure out what meaning the earrings held but got sick of thinking and—"

"Went mental?" I finished.

"Sort of, yeah."

Finally, the diamonds broke apart and clinked loudly next to each other. They were still big but I was sure I could spot something inside of them.

Miles tucked away his gun and we all raced towards him at once.

"What were you thinking?" Sarinne shouted. "You can't just completely abolish our next clue! We'll never get out of here now—"

But Miles wasn't listening, even as the rest of us voiced our own furious comments. Luna was the only quiet one, yet I could tell she was annoyed. However, it didn't seem to bother Miles all too much since he leapt forward and grabbed the shattered earrings.

"Stop screeching your complaints at me," he spat at us, handing the earrings over to Darius, "and look at the damned things."

So we did. We all looked over Darius's shoulder to examine the broken jewellery, and I noticed what I'd seen beforehand immediately. I'd assumed it was some sort of odd substance that Lyasa had used when she'd had them made for her love, Eche, but could now make out what it really was.

Within the two splintered earrings were two halves of a tiny picture. I took both into my hands and fitted them together like two puzzle pieces. It was a picture of the Golden Chalice. The actual Golden Chalice, sitting in the centre of what looked to be a sort of cave or chamber of some sorts atop a large rock, torches lighting up the whole place. Even in the photograph, the Chalice glittered and sparkled, luminescent. However, the Chalice wasn't the only thing that caught my eye: the cave had three mirrors behind the Chalice, one on the left, the middle, and the right. And in the one on the right, a hand could be seen, holding onto the wall. It was clearly a man's hand and—

"It's Victor Lyrana," I said in a gasped whisper.

Everyone's attention returned to me. "What?" they all said simultaneously. All except for Darius, who was staring at me with realisation.

"His ring," Darius said, taking his eyes off me and pointing down at the photo. At the hand of the man. The man wearing a ring on his middle finger. "Victor Lyrana—the man Scarlett and I spoke to at the birthday celebrations back on Diamanda Isle—this is him. He's the man in the picture."

Unsure of what this meant, I turned the picture around and my jaw nearly dropped again when I saw the writing on the back:

APHESES HIMSELF

"Who's—"

"Apheses," breathed Miles, his voice laced in a rare sort of panic that I never saw surface from him, "is the Olympian of death. The Olympian of Vacuos Isle."