Page 31 of A Taste of Silver
"I don't. That's why I'm asking."
He glanced around despite us being alone, as if speaking the name might summon its owner. "The Crimson One was the Mirror Prince before me. My... predecessor, you might say. He's what happens when love becomes obsession, when desire becomes hunger."
"He's like you? Trapped between realms?"
"He's nothing like me." Venom laced Silvyr's words. "He chose his curse. Murdered his Mirrorwalker to claim her power, thinking it would free him. Instead, it transformed him into something that feeds on reflections, on the essence of what mirrors show."
A chill that had nothing to do with the winter air ran down my spine. "And he wants your power?"
"He wants what I have, a living anchor to the mortal realm. You." Silvyr's hand pressed flat against the underside of the reflection. "As long as you exist, I exist. He knows that. He's been waiting for you to awaken, to remember, so he can take your bond with me and twist it to serve him instead."
"How do you know all this?"
"Because he's been whispering to me for decades, telling me exactly what he'll do when he finds a way through." His form flickered, exhaustion pulling at his edges. "The court doesn't know he exists. They think their sealed mirrors are empty, dead things. They're wrong."
Wagon wheels clattered on the main road. Another convoy of mirrors passing. I watched them, mind racing. "The black market. I heard rumors in the village, people selling mirror fragments."
"Lost things made visible." Silvyr's voice grew fainter. "Memories, loves, possibilities. The mirrors caught them before the ban, and now desperate people pay fortunes for glimpses of what they've lost. But every transaction weakens the barriersbetween realms. Every fragment sold creates another crack the Crimson One can exploit."
"You're fading."
"This form... can't hold without..." He gestured weakly at the puddle's edges. "Need a proper threshold. Real mirror."
I reached toward the water, then stopped. "If I touch the surface, will it anchor you?"
"Don't." The word came out sharp, desperate. "Your marks would react. Everyone would see."
My hand hovered inches from the puddle. In its reflection, I saw myself from below, face drawn with exhaustion, silver threading through my hair despite the careful braiding, and something else. A shadow behind me that wasn't cast by anything in the mortal realm.
"You're afraid of me," Silvyr said, his voice a quiet statement of fact.
"No." I met his gaze, black stars in a face that couldn't decide its shape. "I'm afraid of how much I want to trust you."
Something shifted in his expression, a vulnerability that made him look achingly young despite the centuries he'd existed. "I'm afraid of the same thing. Trust means hope, and hope is..." He paused, searching for words. "Dangerous for things like me."
"You're not a thing."
"I'm not human either. Not anymore." His outline blurred further. "The palace... be careful. The throne room has a mirror they think is dead. It's not. It's sleeping, waiting for someone with enough power to wake it."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because despite everything, the curse, the binding, the decades of silence…I still..." His form was barely visible now, just suggestion and silver light. "The garden. Remember the garden.When they question you, when they try to break you, remember what we planted there."
"Silvyr—"
"Time's up, miss!" The driver's voice cut across the courtyard.
I jerked upright, knees soaked and aching from the ice. The puddle reflected only gray sky now, ordinary and empty. But in the disturbance my movement created, I glimpsed something, a serpent's form dissolving into the depths, pulling itself back to whatever prison held it.
The driver stood by the carriage, pointedly not looking at me kneeling by a puddle like a madwoman. "We need to go. The palace doesn't like to be kept waiting."
I stood, my dress clinging wet and cold to my legs. As I walked back to the carriage, I caught the driver's expression, carefully neutral, deliberately incurious. He'd learned, as everyone in Virelda had, not to see things that shouldn't exist.
The carriage door closed behind me with finality. We rolled out of the inn's courtyard and onto the main road, where traffic thickened as we approached the capital proper. Buildings rose higher, pressed closer, their windows dark and empty.
No glass. No mirrors. No reflections anywhere.
The city had gouged out its own eyes rather than see what looked back.
