Page 22 of A Taste of Silver
The garden bloomed in response, roses unfurling in impossible colors, the ground solidifying into something that could hold weight and memory and promise. She was remembering. Slowly, carefully, but remembering nonetheless.
I smiled, and knew she saw it in the mirror's depths before she yanked her gaze away.
"Soon," I promised the space between us. "Soon, little flame. Whether the realms allow it or not."
The Last Mirror pulsed with warmth that felt like agreement. Or warning. In this place, they were often the same thing.
I settled in to wait, to watch, to guard the garden that held our memories. But waiting felt different now. Not like the desperate time before, but like the pause before dawn, when the sky holds its breath and the world balances on the edge of light.
She was coming back to me. Memory by memory, dream by dream, she would find her way home.
And when she finally arrived, complete and powerful with all she'd forgotten, we would finish what we'd started.
Even if it destroyed us both.
Even if it remade the world.
Some promises were worth any price. And Aurea Miren? My light, my bond, my salvation and damnation combined. She was worth them all.
CHAPTER NINE
Chapter 9
Aurea
I pressed a cold hand to the glass as I watched the dawn light filter through the city. The last silver petal dissolved on my tongue, tasting of frost and old promises. A whisper from the garden. His touch lingered. The taste lingered. Everything but the answers.
I pushed to my feet, clothes I’d fallen asleep in heavy with dream-dampness that shouldn't exist. My reflection in the small mirror above my washstand looked wrong. My eyes were too bright, hair threaded with silver that hadn't been there yesterday. The marks on my arms pulsed beneath the fabric, warm as fresh wounds.
Something inside my chest twisted and pulled, like a compass needle finding north. But north wasn't a direction anymore. North was knowledge. North was the truth I'd hidden from myself.
An invisible string pulled taut in my chest, yanking me toward the wardrobe. The doors flew open under my hands, clothes tumbling out in a heap of practical cotton andwool, dresses, herb-gathering cloaks, the leather gloves Melora insisted I wear. Nothing. I pulled out drawers, dumping their contents, searching the wood for false bottoms or hidden compartments. My fingers traced every seam and joint.
Nothing.
The trunk at the foot of my bed came next. Winter blankets, old boots, a dried bouquet of moonbloom I'd forgotten about. The flowers crumbled at my touch, releasing their silvery pollen into the air. It swirled around me, drawn to the marks on my arms like iron filings to a magnet.
Still nothing.
I turned to the bed itself, grabbing fistfuls of sheets and yanking them free. The mattress beneath looked ordinary, rough and stuffed with straw and herbs to keep away moths and bad dreams. A sharp inhale, and I froze. Along one edge, almost invisible against the pale ticking, a line of stitching gleamed. Silver thread.
My fingers ran along the seam. The thread felt warm, familiar. Like coming home after a long journey to find someone had left a candle burning in the window.
I grabbed my herb knife from the bedside table and carefully worked the blade under the stitches. They parted with a sound like sighing, and the mattress gaped open, revealing not straw but paper. Pages and pages, folded and pressed flat, hidden in the belly of where I slept.
The first sheet trembled in my grip. My handwriting stared back at me, but the words might as well have been written by a stranger:
Day 1 after the attempt: The binding failed. He's trapped deeper now, and I can feel the realm pulling at me, trying to drag me back. Must document everything before they make me forget. Must leave breadcrumbs for when I wake up empty.
My legs gave out. I sank to the floor, pages spreading around me like fallen leaves. Each one covered in my desperate scrawl, diagrams that hurt to look at, sketches that moved when I wasn't watching directly.
And Silvyr. Page after page of Silvyr.
His face from every angle, captured in loving detail. His serpent form, coiled and magnificent. His hands, I'd drawn his hands over and over, as if trying to memorize their shape through repetition. Notes crowded the margins:His laugh sounds like wind chimes. When he's thinking, he tilts his head left. He tastes like winter starlight.
One page made me stop breathing entirely. A binding circle, intricate as lace, with two figures drawn in the center. They stood facing each other, hands clasped, and from their joined fingers, silver fire spiraled outward. Above the diagram, written in letters that pressed deep enough to scar the paper:
THE GLASS MUST NOT BREAK
