Page 66 of A Taste of Silver
"They're breaking through!" The words came out sharper than intended, edged with fear.
Silvyr's hand found mine in the chaos, brief but electric contact that sent understanding flooding through our bond like warm honey. Not just any glass. The knowledge arrived complete and certain. Tempered glass. Glass that had been heated, held, and cooled with deliberate purpose and infinite patience.
The memory-lesson clicked into place with the force of revelation. My mother's voice, teaching six-year-old me in our garden, "Fire makes it strong, patience makes it flexible, cooling makes it last. Remember that, little star. All the best things require all three."
I pulled heat from my silver marks, feeling them flare bright against my skin as the burning cold of mirror-magic flowed into the glass. Silvyr still fought, protecting me, trusting that whatever it was I was doing was important. Vaen fought as well, but it was when Silvyr’s serpent-fire joined mine without hesitation that I started to feel that it could work. His fire wasn’t consuming but refining, not destroying but perfecting. Together we held the temperature steady, our breathing synchronized as we maintained the precise balance between creation and destruction. The air shimmered around us with barely contained power. Then, as one, we released the heat gradually, controlled, purposeful, letting it bleed away like a sunset fading into night.
The mirrors in my hands transformed before my eyes. No longer simple glass but something between worlds, something that belonged to both reality and dreams. Something strong enough to hold a wraith's essence without shattering and flexible enough to bend reality without breaking it entirely.
The trapped wraiths writhed and screamed, but they couldn't escape. The tempered mirrors had become permanent prisons, infinite corridors with no exit, no hope of freedom. Their cries grew fainter, more distant, until they were nothing but echoes in glass.
"Together," I breathed, and Silvyr's fingers interlaced with mine, warm and solid and real. "We're stronger together than we ever were apart."
"Always were." His voice carried years of longing finally fulfilled, notes of joy threading through ancient pain. "Evenwhen we couldn't remember. Even when the world tried to keep us apart."
We moved through the theatre-battlefield like dancers who'd rehearsed for lifetimes, every step anticipated, every gesture understood before it was made. When a massive wraith, clearly their leader since it was larger than the rest and crackling with malevolent intelligence, burst through the stage floor in an explosion of splintered wood and shadow, we didn't hesitate.
I tossed a mirror high, watching it spin and catch the fractured light. Silvyr caught it with serpent-quick reflexes, angling it perfectly to catch my reflection holding another mirror. I reflected his reflection back at him, the image bouncing between us faster than thought. The recursion exploded outward, creating not just a corridor but a maze, a crystalline web of infinite passages that surrounded the wraith-leader completely.
Our combined fire tempered the entire structure in one breathless moment that stretched like eternity. The creature's roar of fury became a whisper, then silence, as it found itself lost in its own endless reflections, trapped in a prison of its own making.
The remaining wraiths fled back through the cracks they'd entered from, reality sealing behind them like water closing over a stone as our song reinforced the theatre's boundaries and made them whole again.
We stood in the sudden stillness, breathing hard, still back to back but no longer from necessity. Now it was choice, the desire to stay connected, to feel each other's presence after so long apart. The theatre settled around us, real and solid and safe.
"With you," I said, turning to face him, meeting those constellation eyes that held all the stars I'd ever wished on. "I don't need to second-guess or doubt. You move, I move. You sing, I harmonize. It's like?—"
"Like we're two verses of the same song." His constellation eyes held mine, and I saw eternity reflected there. "We always were. The binding just would have forced it. This... this is choosing it freely."
Before I could respond, crystalline laughter filled the air like wind chimes in a gentle breeze. Syra materialized on the stage, her fractal face shifting through expressions of amusement and urgent concern, fragments of light dancing around her reformed shape.
"Beautiful performance! Truly moving! Brought a tear to my non-existent eye!" Her form solidified enough to tap what might have been a wrist, if she'd had wrists in any conventional sense. "But—" The word carried weight, hanging in the air like a sword. "Three songs left to write. Three! And time's running rather thin, wouldn't you say? The realms don't particularly enjoy hovering between states. Makes them frightfully queasy."
"Three songs?" I pulled away from Silvyr reluctantly, already missing his warmth. "What do you mean? We've been writing?—"
Syra's face rearranged into something resembling maternal concern, her features shifting like water finding its level. "Past, present, future, dear one. The fundamental verses of existence itself. You've been writing present tense, yes, very clever, very now, but the Crimson One has his own version of the past, and without a future verse to anchor everything..." She trailed off, her form fragmenting slightly at the edges. "Well, let's just say reality prefers complete compositions. Unfinished symphonies make the universe nervous."
The theatre trembled, not from attack but from instability, like a building settling on an uncertain foundation. Through the walls, I glimpsed other possibilities flickering like ghosts, versions where we'd failed and the world had ended in shadow, where we'd succeeded differently and changed everything,where we'd never existed at all and the story belonged to someone else entirely.
"The songbook," Silvyr said suddenly, his voice cutting through my growing panic. "We need to finish what the Queens started. Complete the work they died for."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Chapter 24
Aurea
The stage bathed itself in silver light that shouldn't exist, not the warm glow of mortal flames nor the cold brilliance of star-fire, but something between and beyond both. This was light born from memory itself, casting shadows that moved independent of their sources, dancing to rhythms older than the realms. Memory-projections flickered across the walls like moths made of starlight, each one carrying a fragment of history that wanted to be remembered, needed to be witnessed. They spiraled around us in endless loops, some bright with joy, others dark with sorrow, all of them humming with the resonance of lives lived and lost.
The air itself felt thick with accumulated time, pressing against my skin like silk that had absorbed centuries of tears and laughter. I could taste copper and moonlight on my tongue, could feel the weight of every choice that had led to this moment settling on my shoulders like a mantle woven from consequence.
The Crimson One materialized from the space between reflections, stepping through a mirror that hadn't existed aheartbeat before. His form was more solid than I'd ever seen it, not the writhing mass of hunger from before, but something almost human. Almost, but not quite. If humans were carved from ruby glass and leaked darkness at the edges, if they wore faces that shifted between beauty and horror with each flicker of candlelight, then perhaps he might pass for mortal. But there was something fundamentally wrong in his proportions, as if he'd learned human form from studying reflections that were somehow distorted, rather than living it.
He wore a face that might have been handsome once, before centuries of consuming others had worn away everything but appetite. High cheekbones and a strong jaw, eyes that should have held warmth but instead contained only echoes of the emotions he'd devoured. When he smiled, his teeth gleamed too sharp, too white, like pearls set in blood.
"Such a touching display." His voice carried the resonance of a thousand stolen throats, each word layered with harmonies that shouldn't exist together. I could hear mothers singing lullabies, lovers whispering promises, children crying for comfort, all of it twisted into his mockery. "The Mirror Queen's daughter and her pet serpent, playing at unity while the realms tear themselves apart."
The casual cruelty in his tone made my silver tracery flare with protective heat. Beside me, I felt Silvyr's form ripple with barely contained fury, his serpent nature rising to meet the threat. But there was something else threading through his anger, pity, deep and profound, the kind that comes from recognizing oneself in another's fall.
