The Golden Chalice

✰✦✰ Chapter 34 ✰✦✰

✰✦✰ Chapter 34 ✰✦✰
" Tricked "

THE FOUR OF us were hurrying up the stairs onto the open deck, being led by Sarinne, and eventually came to see a very angry looking Miles who was being held back by a shouting Darius.

Miles had clearly started demolishing them, a silver hammer in his tightened grip, pointing up at the sky. All he did was make me question my reasons for having brought him along. My mind raced with panic—

Darius grunted, straining against Miles's strength. "Don't—"

"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Jacks snapped, eating up the space between our two groups.

We followed suit. It was a mistake. Because, as soon as we took a step forward, Darius's gaze flicked from Miles's to ours, rounding in surprise and offering Miles the window of opportunity he needed to slam the hammer down onto the earrings on the table once more. The diamonds shattered, bits and pieces flying across the table.

"What is wrong with you?" Sarinne yelled. "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. His chest heaved and he leapt forward, snatching what was left of the mutilated 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 peered over Darius's shoulder to examine the broken jewellery, and I noticed something shiny.

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 crinkled, old photograph of the Chalice. The actual Chalice, sitting in the centre of what looked to be a sort of cave or chamber atop a large rock, torches nailed to the walls.

Even in the photograph, the Chalice glittered and sparkled, luminescent with magic so unlike what modern times now offered. However, the Chalice wasn't the only thing that caught my eye: behind the rock were three tall mirrors, reaching from the floor to the ceiling; one glued to the left, the middle, and the right. And in the one on the right, a hand could be seen, clutching the wall. It was clearly a man's hand and—

"It's Victor Lyrana," I gasped.

Everyone's attention snapped to me. "What?" they all said simultaneously.

"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 Solaris and I spoke to at the museum—this is him. He's the man in the picture."

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

APHESES — Olympian of Death — Traitor of the Heavens

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

I felt like I was tripping over a dozen branches towards my own death when I said, "Vacuos Isle? The one inhabited and taken over by Shadow Stealers?" I knew my history well enough to not need to ask such a question, but my mind was running wild laps and it needed to find some balanced ground.

"Exactly that."

"I'm sorry"—Luna paled—"but what does this mean? Are we saying that Victor is Apheses?"