The relic slipped from Apollo's grasp as Lyra's voice cut through the night.
"What are you doing?"
Her silhouette appeared against the fading embers, rigid with tension. Apollo froze, the unwrapped artifact gleaming between them like a confession. The gold in his veins retreated beneath his skin, a guilty current running cold.
"Lyra, I can explain—" he began, but she was already advancing, knife drawn, eyes reflecting pinpricks of dying firelight.
"I knew it," she hissed, her voice low enough not to wake the others. "You've been listening to it all along."
Apollo rose slowly, hands raised in a placating gesture. "It's not what you think."
"No?" Her laugh was brittle as frost. "Because it looks like you're communing with the thing that's been mocking us, leading us in circles, and driving wedges between us since we found it."
