Page 63 of A Taste of Silver
"She knew." My finger traced the notes without touching. "About the merging, about what would happen if someone completed a binding."
"She tried to prevent it by sealing the Crimson One." Silvyr's presence behind me was a cold weight, comforting and challenging in equal measure. "But sealing isn't solving. Pressure builds until..."
Until now. Until realms hemorrhaged into each other through every reflective surface.
I turned more pages, finding verses from Queens I'd never known existed. Each one had documented their understanding of the bond, their attempts to master or escape it. Some entries were love songs to their bonded entities. Others were curses, desperate attempts to sever connections that consumed them.
Then I found Silvyr's writing.
Different from the Queens' entries, darker ink, sharper script. An unfinished opera written in the margins and bleeding across multiple pages. The story of a serpent prince cursed to watch the world through glass, and the girl who promised to free him.
"You wrote about us."
"Started to." His hand hovered near mine on the page, not quite touching. "Could never write the ending. Didn't know if it would be triumph or tragedy."
"Still don't," I admitted.
Through the theatre walls, I felt more than heard the realms grinding against each other. Prince Aldric's binding circle had become a wound that wouldn't close, pulling both worlds through the gap. Soon there'd be no distinction between mortal and mirror, between real and reflection.
"Teach me." I stepped away from the book, creating distance between us that felt wrong but necessary. "The magic here. How to shape it."
Silvyr moved to the center of the stage, gesturing for me to follow. The silver curtains parted without touch, revealing an empty space that somehow contained infinite possibility.
"Here, thought and sound are the same substance." He turned to face me, constellation eyes serious. "What you sing becomes real. What you imagine takes form. But be careful?—"
"The cost." I understood without explanation. "Making something from nothing requires something from the maker."
"Not from nothing. From will. From essence." He gestured, and a single silver rose materialized in his palm. Perfect, crystalline, but I could see how the effort dimmed him slightly, made his edges less defined, even if only for a second. "Everything here is an exchange."
I pulled off my gloves, exposing the silver marks that now reached past my elbows. They pulsed with their own rhythm, a heartbeat that existed outside normal time.
"Sing silver," Silvyr instructed. "Make the magic visible through melody."
I opened my mouth, but only silence emerged. The ghost-melody I'd used instinctively in the mortal realm felt muffled here, buried under the weight of conscious attempt.
"Not from your throat." Silvyr moved behind me, close enough that I felt his presence like winter breathing on my neck. "From the marks. They're not just decoration or the words of the binding. They're notation. Your body is the instrument."
I focused on the silver patterns, really looked at them for the first time. They weren't random or merely beautiful. Nor were they truly words like I’d thought. They were sheet music written in light, measures and movements encoded in my very skin.
A hum rose, not from my voice but from the marks themselves, resonating like struck crystal. The sound became visible, threads of silver light weaving through the air between us.
"Beautiful." Silvyr's voice carried pride and something deeper. "Now shape it. Give it purpose."
I thought of binding circles, of prisons made from dance steps and intention. The silver threads responded, weaving into patterns that hung in the air like three-dimensional sheet music. But where Prince Aldric's circle had been about constraint, mine formed connections, lines that joined rather than divided.
"Careful." Silvyr stepped back sharply, and I saw why. Where my silver threads had touched him, his form had solidified further, becoming more real, more present. But each point of contact pulled at something in my chest, a draining sensation like blood being slowly drawn.
"It's taking from me." I had known it would, but to see it and feel it were different things. I let the threads dissolve, the visible music fading back to mere humming.
"Making me more real costs you reality." His expression was pained. "Another impossible exchange. Together here, we're balanced on a knife's edge."
A crack split the air, the sound of mirrors breaking in reverse. Through the theatre walls, a figure approached through the Garden's twisted paths. Not the Crimson One. Someone else, someone whose presence made my marks flare with recognition and conflict.
Vaen.
My brother looked at me and his eyes held the weight of standing guard between worlds for over a decade, watching, waiting, unable to truly touch either realm.
"Sister." His voice came from everywhere and nowhere, wind chimes and breaking glass. "The Crimson One knows you'rehere. He's gathering strength from the consumed courtiers, preparing for something worse than the merger."
