Page 29 of A Taste of Silver
Be careful. The court remembers what we tried to make them forget.
His hand pressed against his side of the reflection, and for a moment, I thought I felt the warmth of his palm against my cheek.
Then the carriage wheels clattered outside, and the moment shattered like everything else I'd thought I'd known about myself.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Chapter 12
Aurea
The carriage wheels ground against frozen ruts, each jolt sending fresh pain through my spine. I pressed my shadow-silk gloves against my thighs, fighting the urge to peel them off and examine how far the marks had spread since morning. The fabric clung to my skin, a second layer of flesh that seemed to drink the magic thrumming through my veins, leaving my own skin feeling tight and cold beneath.
Outside the window, the landscape shifted from the familiar snow-draped fields surrounding Melora's apothecary to something harder. Stone walls replaced wooden fences. Cobblestones emerged from beneath the snow, scraped clean by constant traffic. The air itself grew heavier, weighted with smoke from a thousand chimneys and the particular exhaustion that clung to cities like fog.
A wagon rumbled past, heading away from the capital. Canvas covered its cargo, but the shape beneath was unmistakable, rectangular, flat, the size of a man standing witharms spread. Mirrors. Dozens of them, judging by how the wagon's axles groaned.
Another wagon followed. Then another.
I leaned forward, pressing my face closer to the window. The glass fogged with my breath, but not before I counted six wagons in the convoy, each loaded with covered mirrors. Even from this distance, the magic in my veins registered only a void, a hollow ache where a reflection should be.
"Driver." I rapped my knuckles against the small sliding panel that separated the cabin from the driver's bench. "Those wagons, where are they taking the mirrors?"
The panel slid open a fraction. The driver's weathered face appeared in profile, his attention still fixed on the road ahead. "Disposal sites outside the city limits, miss. Been running convoys all week."
"All week? Why now?"
His shoulders tensed. "Incidents, miss. Best not to speak of it."
I leaned forward. "Incidents involving mirrors?"
The driver's shoulders went rigid. He didn't answer, just clicked his tongue at the horses.
"My family has... an interest in the glass trade," I lied, the words tasting like ash. "Any disruption to the supply is a concern."
The driver's jaw worked as if chewing something bitter. "This isn't about supply. This is about what's looking back. The kind of thing that leaves folk dead or mad. Started three days past, mirrors waking up all over the capital. Showing things that weren't there. Or maybe showing things that were there but shouldn't be seen." He clicked his tongue at the horses, urging them faster. "Crown ordered every mirror in the city removed, special permit or no. Even the sealed ones."
A cold knot formed in my gut. Three days ago. The day I'd first heard his voice. The two events were linked; I knew it with a certainty that stole my breath. How many people had looked into their forbidden reflections and seen something that broke them?
"There's an inn ahead," the driver continued. "We'll rest the horses there before the final push to the palace. Twenty minutes, no more."
The inn materialized from the gathering dusk like something conjured, weathered stone walls, timber beams black with age, windows that glowed amber with firelight but reflected nothing. Even the sign hanging above the door had been carved from wood rather than painted on metal. No surface here could throw back an image.
The carriage rolled to a stop in the courtyard. My boots hit the frozen ground with a crack, ice fracturing beneath my weight. The air tasted of coming snow and chimney smoke, with something else beneath, a metallic tang that made my shadow-silk gloves tighten against my marks.
"Twenty minutes, miss." The driver busied himself with the horses, deliberately not looking at me.
I crossed the courtyard, needing distance from the suffocating confines of the carriage. Movement. Space to think before the palace walls closed around me.
My gaze snagged on a puddle.
It spread across a depression in the cobblestones where the ice had melted and refrozen, creating a surface smooth as glass. The sky reflected in it was wrong, too bright, with stars that shouldn't be visible in the fading afternoon light. Stars arranged in patterns I recognized from dreams, from memories that tasted of silver.
The puddle rippled.
No wind touched it. No vibration from passing carts. The ripple came from beneath, as if something pressed against the underside of the reflection.
I glanced around. The driver faced away, absorbed in checking the horses' hooves. The inn's windows showed only vague shapes moving inside. I was alone with the impossible puddle and its impossible stars.
