Page 4 of A Taste of Silver
The silver liquid spread across the stone floor, not a spill but a script. It twisted into living mercury, forming and reforming curves that were almost letters, symbols that ached behind my eyes with a forgotten familiarity. A language I knew down to the marrow of my bones I had once understood.
"How does it know my name?" The words were a rasp of air and friction in my throat.
Lord Valtier pressed his back against the mantelpiece, knuckles white where he gripped the marble edge. Sweat beaded along his hairline despite the room's growing chill. "I don't…I've never spoken of you to it. I swear on my mother's grave."
The script on the floor pulsed again, bright as moonlight, then finally faded to ordinary spillage. Just herbs and water now, nothing more. But my fingers tingled beneath my gloves, the silver threading warm against my skin.
"You hired me." I stepped around the puddle, keeping the exposed mirror in my peripheral vision. That serpentine shadowstill moved behind the glass, patient as winter. "You sent word to Melora's shop specifically. Why?"
"The–the dreams told me where to find help." His adam's apple bobbed. "They said an apothecary would come. One who could..." He gestured helplessly at the spreading puddle. "One who could do that."
The fire popped, sending sparks up the chimney. In the brief flare of light, the carved serpents on the mirror's frame seemed to shift, scales rippling in waves that couldn't be tricks of illumination.
Melora's voice echoed from a decade past, sharp as the day she'd spoken the words,They remember what we choose to forget, child. That's why we cover them. That's why we look away.
Seven-year-old me had been polishing the shop's windows, making them gleam until I could see myself clearly in the glass.But what if I want to remember?
Then you're a fool.Melora had pulled me away from the window, those weathered hands gentle but firm.Some things are better left buried. Some doors, once opened, swallow both key and keeper.
The memory dissolved as the temperature plummeted. My breath misted in the air, each exhale a small cloud that shouldn't exist in a room with a roaring fire.
The mirror's surface rippled.
Not reflection. Not glass. The blackness within moved like deep water, like the space between stars where light had never been. My feet carried me forward before my mind could form the command to stop.
"Don't." Valtier's voice cracked. "It pulls at you. Every night, it pulls, and I, well, I can barely resist anymore."
Valtier's warning was a sound without meaning, lost beneath the hum emanating from the glass. The mirror filled my vision,the world shrinking until only its ornate frame remained, a border between the study and... elsewhere. This close, I could see the craftsmanship. Each serpent scale had been individually carved, each eye a chip of obsidian that seemed to track my movement.
The black surface cleared.
A massive serpent filled the glass, white as fresh snow, each scale catching light that didn't exist in Valtier's study. The creature moved with liquid grace, muscles rippling beneath that impossible skin. Its head alone was the size of my torso, triangular and elegant, ancient and young all at once.
The eyes opened.
Stars. Actual stars burned in those sockets, not reflected light but constellations I'd seen in winter skies, patterns I'd traced as a child when sleep wouldn't come. The serpent pressed against the glass from its side, and the barrier bent like silk under pressure.
You taste of forgotten silver.
The voice bloomed inside my skull, neither male nor female but something older than such distinctions. It bypassed my ears entirely, resonating in the hollow spaces between my thoughts.
How long will you pretend you don't know me?
My hand rose without permission, fingertips nearly touching the glass before I jerked back. The silver threading in my gloves burned cold, frost spreading across the fabric in fractal patterns.
"I don't…" The words died as something wet touched my cheek.
Snow fell from the study's ceiling. Not through it, but actually from it, materializing from empty air to drift down in lazy spirals. But these weren't ordinary snowflakes. Each one that landed on my outstretched palm was a perfect silver petal, delicate as spring blossoms, cold as midwinter frost.
Valtier made a sound between sob and laugh. "Do you see? Do you understand now why I called you?"
The serpent's massive head tilted, a gesture so human it made my chest ache with recognition I couldn't name. Those constellation eyes never left my face.
You wore silver ribbons in your hair. You laughed when I showed you how to walk between raindrops.
"Stop." The word came out as barely a whisper.
You promised me something once. In a garden that no longer exists. Do you remember what you promised, little flame?
