Page 15 of A Taste of Silver
"The realm twisted everything it touched. Connections that should have been beautiful became chains. The bonded entities were trapped, transformed into monsters." She gestured at my marked arm. "And the Mirrorwalkers who survived were marked as outcasts. Dangers to be eliminated."
"So you decided to eliminate me a different way." The accusation tasted bitter. "Suppress my magic, hide my nature, make me forget everything that mattered."
"You were dying!" The words exploded from Melora, raw and desperate. "When I found you, you were burning from the inside out. Your magic was consuming you, trying to reach something that wasn't there anymore. The only way to save you was to sever the connection."
"By making me forget."
"Memory and magic are linked in your bloodline. Break one, you damage the other." Tears tracked down Melora's weathered cheeks. "I had to choose between letting you die as yourself or live as someone else. I chose life. I chose you, even if it meant you'd never truly be you again."
The shop fell silent except for the whisper of snow against windows. In the uncovered mirrors, scenes flickered, the garden, the serpent, moments that felt like memories but couldn't be.
"The nightmares I have. The ones where I'm falling through glass?—"
"Not nightmares. Memories trying to surface." Melora wiped her face with her sleeve. "The mind doesn't like being caged. It fights back in dreams."
"And you just kept drugging me. Kept pushing it all down."
"What else could I do? Let you remember? Let you reach for power that would kill you?" She stood, pacing to the window. "You were alone and a child, Aurea, and calling for someone named Silvyr like your heart was being torn from your chest. Youscreamed his name until your throat bled. The only peace you found was when I finally made you forget."
I looked down at the mirror shard still in my hand. The garden had changed, the two figures were closer now, and I could almost make out their faces. Almost.
"The silver markings won't stop spreading, will they?"
"No. Now that the connection's been reestablished, your magic will keep surfacing. The gloves can't suppress it anymore." Melora turned from the window. "You're becoming what you were always meant to be. And I can't protect you from it."
"Maybe I don't need protection. Maybe I need truth."
"Truth?" A dry, hollow sound escaped Melora's lips, devoid of all humor. "The truth is that every Mirror Queen before you ended the same way, consumed by the very power they wielded. The truth is that your bonded entity, this Silvyr, is as much curse as companion now. The truth is that the Crown will execute you the moment they confirm what you are."
"Then why save me at all?"
The question hung between us, sharp as the mirror shard's edge.
"Because you were a child who needed help. Because I'd lost my own daughter to the Prohibition Forces, and I couldn't watch another child die." Melora's voice broke completely. "Because even knowing what you were, what danger you represented, you were still just a little girl crying in the snow."
The rage that had held my spine rigid sputtered out, leaving me hollow. The image of Melora as a villain fractured. In its place stood a woman hunched against a storm I had never known was raging, her face etched with the cost of a fourteen-year-long lie.
"I'm not that little girl anymore."
"No." Melora approached slowly, like I might bolt. "You're not. You're something I don't fully understand. Something that terrifies me and fills me with pride in equal measure."
She reached out, hesitating just before touching my marked arm.
"May I?"
I nodded.
Melora's fingers traced the silver patterns, following their spiral from wrist to elbow. Where she touched, the markings flared brighter, responding to examination.
"They're beautiful." Wonder crept into her voice. "I've seen illustrations in the old texts, but this... they look alive."
"They feel alive. Like something singing under my skin."
"Your mother's marks were similar. She could make flowers bloom in winter, call light from empty air." Melora's touch lingered on a particular spiral near my elbow. "She tried to teach me once. Said magic wasn't about forcing change but about remembering what was already possible."
"What happened to her?"
"The same thing that happens to everyone who defies the Crown's laws." Melora withdrew her hand. "She died believing her children would carry on her work. That Vaen and I would restore the connections she couldn't save."
