Page 21 of A Taste of Silver
"She's remembering."
The voice came from behind me. I didn't turn; I knew who it was. What it was.
"Not fast enough," I said.
"Memory isn't a river you can rush." The thing that wore my mother's face moved to stand beside me. She'd been dead for longer than Aurea had been alive, but here in the realm between mirrors, death was negotiable. "Push too hard and she'll shatter. You know this."
"I know waiting." The words came out bitter. "I know watching. I know calling through every reflection in her world and being met with silence."
"And now the silence breaks." She, it, studied the Last Mirror with eyes that reflected too much. "But are you ready for whatshe'll become when she fully remembers? The girl you knew is gone. The woman she is now?—"
"Is still mine."
The claim hung in the air like a blade. Possessive. Absolute. True in ways that transcended physical reality.
My mother's image smiled, an expression that didn't quite fit the borrowed face. "The Sundering changed more than just the realms, my son. It changed the nature of bonds themselves. What you had with her before, innocent, pure, children playing at love… It cannot exist now. If she remembers fully, if she accepts what you are to each other, the bond will remake you both."
"I know."
"Do you? You've become something darker in her absence. The serpent form isn't just shape anymore, it's nature. You're the monster the Crown painted you as, the creature parents use to frighten children from mirrors. And she…" The thing wearing my mother's face paused, choosing words carefully. "She's been human for fourteen years. Truly human. The power sleeping in her blood might wake, but the girl who knew how to wield it is gone."
I thought of Aurea in the garden, her confusion, her fear, the way she'd pulled away even as her body recognized mine. She was different, yes. Older. Marked by loss, one she couldn't fully remember. But still underneath, essentially, eternally mine.
"Then we'll learn each other again."
"And if she chooses differently? If the woman she's become doesn't want the bond the girl she was created?"
The question should have hurt. Instead, it just made me laugh, a sound like breaking glass, like dying stars.
"She already spoke my name. Already reached through Valtier's mirror. Her blood carries silver, her dreams bring her here, and every reflection in her world sings when she passes.The choice was made before either of us existed. We're just remembering it now."
The false mother studied me with eyes that held too much sympathy. "Fate and choice aren't the same thing, Silvyr. Even prophecies can be refused."
"Not this one." I turned to face the thing directly, letting it see the stars burning in my eyes, the barely controlled power that fourteen years of solitude had fermented into something potent and terrible. "She promised to free me. Swore it in the old tongue, with blood and silver and starlight as witness. That kind of oath doesn't break. It just waits."
"And when she frees you? What then? You'll walk in her world as what? Human? Monster? Something between?"
I thought of Aurea's world, the one I'd watched through countless mirrors. The apothecary with its careful herbs and hidden truths. The streets she walked with such deliberate normalcy. The life she'd built on the grave of her memories.
"I'll walk in her world as whatever she needs me to be."
"Even if what she needs is for you to stay here? Stay separate? Stay safe in the realm of dreams and reflections?"
The garden shuddered at the thought, cracks spreading through the crystalline ground. The roses turned black at the edges, their petals falling like ash.
"She won't." But even as I said it, doubt crept in. The Aurea I'd known would never have asked that. But this Aurea, shaped by fourteen years of Melora's careful fears...
The thing wearing my mother's face began to fade, its purpose served. "The binding between you is strengthening with each interaction, each dream, each memory recovered. Soon she'll have to choose. Complete what you started thirteen years ago or sever the connection entirely. There is no middle path, not anymore."
"I know."
"Then prepare yourself. The next time she dreams of herself here, she'll be stronger. More herself. More dangerous." The last words came from everywhere and nowhere as the false mother dissolved entirely. "Love her enough to let her choose, even if she chooses against you."
The garden settled into an uneasy quiet. I stood before the Last Mirror, watching Aurea through a dozen reflections as she moved through her morning routine. Her marked hand caught the light as she reached for something, the silver patterns more elaborate now, spreading past her elbow.
She paused at a mirror in the shop's main room. For a moment, just a heartbeat, she looked directly at me. Not at her reflection, at me. Her lips parted as if to speak, and I pressed against the glass from my side, willing the barrier to thin.
"Silvyr." Just a whisper, barely voiced, but it rang through every mirror in existence.
