Page 50 of A Taste of Silver
Before I could answer, another figure pushed through the guards. Melora stood in the doorway, travel-stained and exhausted, her herb satchel clutched against her chest.
"Gran?" I hadn't called her that in years.
Melora's usual calm was shattered. Her face was pale, her knuckles white where she clutched her herb satchel, and her eyes, usually so steady, darted from me to the cracked mirror.
"The mirrors are waking up. All of them," she said, her voice tight with fear. "Whatever you're doing, the realm itself is responding. And I can't... I can't keep taking it from you. The herbs aren't working anymore."
"Taking what from me?"
Melora's face crumpled. "Your memories. Every few months, sometimes every few weeks. You'd remember him, remember who you are, and I'd have to... I'd have to make you forget again. For your own safety. But each time it got harder to make the forgetting stick."
The words hit like physical blows. "How many times?"
"Seventeen complete resets over fourteen years. Sometimes you'd remember for days. Sometimes hours. Once..." Her voicebroke. "Once you only remembered long enough to write yourself a single note: 'His name is Silvyr and you love him.'"
The room spun as Melora's confession settled in, every reset like a piece of my life plucked and hidden away. Seventeen times I'd been forced to forget Silvyr, forced to lose a part of myself essential to my existence.
And now?—
"Seventeen? You erased me seventeen times, Gran?"
Her face was worn, filled with a distress that burrowed into my own heart and echoed the agony I felt. "Aurea, you were a child! If you'd completed the binding while so young, it would've consumed you both. I couldn't watch you?—"
"I made choices, even as a child," I interrupted. "I promised... to him. To myself."
Melora stepped closer, pleading in her gaze. "Choices made without understanding the consequences aren't true choices. And I did it to keep you alive!"
"Alive? This isn't living!" My voice rose, desperation tainting it with bitterness. "I'm a ghost, haunted by a past you kept buried."
The guards hovered at the edges of the confrontation, unsure if they should intervene. Their swords shifted uneasily, but Melora commanded the room with her presence, her grief. "What choice did I have after the Sundering? After losing?—"
"Vaen," I interjected softly, the name tender and raw on my tongue. "You lost a daughter, I lost a brother. But Vaen chose his path. How many more of those choices will you take from me?"
Melora bowed her head, her silence carrying more weight than words ever could. I bit back the tsunami of emotions threatening to escape and instead leaned into the anger, the betrayal. But her age, her weariness enveloped me in an unavoidable tide.
"There’s no undoing the past, Gran," I said, gentler now.
"What do you intend?" she asked warily, weary of what choices I might unleash from my stores of withheld clarity.
"To find him," I said simply, eyes alight with purpose. "And this time, Gran, I decide what comes next."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Chapter 19
Aurea
The silence stretched between us like a held breath. Melora's confession and my determination hanging in the air while the cracked glass behind me seemed to vibrate with residual energy. I could still feel Silvyr's touch burning through my fingertips, the phantom warmth of skin-to-skin contact across impossible dimensions.
When she realized I wasn't going to break the silence again Melora whispered, "Since the last Mirror Queen died. They've been silent since then. Waiting." Her gaze was fixed on the fractured reflection behind me.
As if her words were a trigger, the mirror began to emit a low, resonant hum. Not quite music, not quite voice, but something between. The sound crawled up through the floorboards, vibrated through the walls, and set my teeth on edge.
"What's the Awakening Chord?" The question escaped before I could stop it.
Melora's face went ashen. "How do you know that term?"
The sound wasn't just coming from my mirror. It thrummed through the entire palace, a deep bass note that seemed to originate from the building's very foundations. I pressed my palm to the wall, feeling the vibration travel up my arm, setting my silver marks ablaze beneath my nightgown.
