Page 67 of A Taste of Silver
Silvyr shifted beside me, his hand finding mine with practiced ease. His fingers were as cold as starlight but solid, real in a way that grounded me to this moment despite the chaos swirling around us. Through our connection, I felt his revulsion and pity war for dominance, a complex tangle of emotionsthat spoke to truths I was only beginning to understand. The Crimson One wasn't just our enemy, he was what we could become if we chose wrong, if love transformed into possession, if unity became consumption.
The memory-projections suddenly sharpened, their aimless dancing coalescing into purpose. They focused on a single image that hung in the air between us like a window into the past. A woman with silver hair that caught light like captured moonbeams, her eyes the color of winter stars viewed through crystal. She stood before a mirror tall as a doorway, her hands pressed against its surface while tears of liquid moonlight tracked down her cheeks. Each tear left a trail of silver fire on her skin, marking her as something more than mortal, something caught between worlds.
Seraphina. The name whispered through my mind without being spoken, carried on the ghost-melody that always sang just beneath the surface of my thoughts.
The Crimson One's expression shifted to something that might have been grief if grief could rot, if sorrow could fester until it became hunger. His voice dropped to something almost tender, almost broken. "My Mirrorwalker. My love."
The projection moved with the fluid grace of remembered dreams, showing Seraphina in motion. She was teaching a younger version of the Crimson One, back when he'd been merely a Mirror Prince, back when his form held beauty without horror. They stood in a circle of silver light, her hands guiding his as she showed him the intricate finger movements that accompanied their version of the ghost-melody. Their voices harmonized perfectly, creating visible threads of connection that bound them closer with each note. Love made manifest in silver light, pure and powerful and achingly beautiful.
I watched, transfixed, as their song built layer upon layer. This was what Silvyr and I had been reaching for, this perfectjoining of voice and spirit, this unity that didn't diminish either participant but transformed them both into something greater. The air around the young lovers shimmered with possibility, with magic so pure it made my chest ache with longing.
"We were perfect together." The Crimson One moved closer to the projection, his fingers passing through Seraphina's image like smoke through starlight. Where he touched her memory, frost flowers bloomed and withered, as if his very presence poisoned even the echo of what they'd shared. "She showed me what unity could be. True joining, not the pale imitation you're attempting."
His words stung, but I forced myself to keep watching, to see what he wanted us to understand. The memory shifted, showing them in different moments, walking hand in hand through gardens that existed only in mirrors, dancing to music only they could hear, sharing whispered conversations in the space between heartbeats. They moved like two parts of a single being, their connection so profound that reality bent around them.
Another memory bloomed, darker now, touched with shadow at the edges. Seraphina and her Prince standing in a binding circle carved from what looked like crystallized starlight, their combined power making reality buckle and bend around them. The air itself seemed to sing, responding to their joined voices with harmonies that spoke of creation itself. But something shifted in the Prince's expression as the ritual deepened, love transforming into possession, desire becoming hunger, partnership warping into dominance.
I saw the exact moment it happened, the precise instant when "ours" became "mine" in his eyes. His grip on Seraphina's hands tightened, and though she smiled at him with perfect trust, I could see the first shadows of doubt creeping into her expression.
"She was going to leave me." The words emerged bitter as wormwood, carried on breath that made the very air around us taste of ashes and regret. His form flickered, the careful human mask slipping to reveal glimpses of the void beneath. "After everything we'd shared, she wanted to return to her mortal life. Said she needed space to be herself."
The memory fractured around us, splitting into jagged pieces that each showed a different angle of the same terrible truth. I saw Seraphina trying to explain, her hands reaching for him even as she spoke of needing distance. I saw his face crumple with understanding, then harden with resolve. I saw the moment he decided that if he couldn't have her freely, he would take her completely.
The image that followed made my stomach lurch with horror. The Prince's hands around Seraphina's throat, not strangling but draining, pulling her essence into himself through their bond. Her eyes widened with betrayal that cut deeper than death, silver tears flowing faster as she realized what he was doing. She didn't fight him, even in that moment, she loved him too much to struggle, trusted him too much to believe he would truly harm her.
But her voice, when she spoke his name one final time, carried all the weight of broken promises and shattered dreams. Even in her last moment, all she had done was profess her love for him.
"So you killed her." My voice came out steady despite the horror crawling up my spine like ice-cold worms. The words seemed to echo in the impossible space, repeating until they became rhythm, became accusation, became truth.
"I preserved her." The Crimson One's form flickered more violently now, showing glimpses of the monster beneath the almost-human mask. Tentacles of shadow writhed where his legs should be, and his face split along invisible seams to revealthe void that had consumed his soul. "She exists in me now, eternal and unchanging. No more doubt, no more distance, just perfect unity."
But even as he spoke the words, I could hear the lie in them, could feel the desperate hunger that drove his justification. He wasn't trying to convince us, he was still trying to convince himself, centuries after the deed was done.
"That's not unity." Silvyr's voice carried the weight of centuries of observation, of watching from the shadows as love after love transformed into possession, as bond after bond became chain. "That's consumption."
The memory-projection shifted again, showing the aftermath with merciless clarity. The Prince, transformed into the Crimson One by his terrible choice, discovering that absorbing Seraphina hadn't freed him but trapped him worse than before. He could cross between realms but belonged to neither, could take any form but had no true shape, could consume endlessly but never be satisfied. Worst of all, he could remember what love felt like but could no longer feel it, could recall the sensation of joy but could never experience it again.
He had become a perfect mirror of emptiness, reflecting everything but containing nothing.
"Your music." I studied him with new understanding, hearing the difference clearly now through my connection with Silvyr. "It's technically perfect but empty. You can replicate any sound, any harmony, but there's no soul behind it."
Where our ghost-melody carried the warmth of shared experience, the depth of genuine emotion, his songs were hollow echoes. Beautiful, yes, but beautiful the way a painted flame is beautiful, all appearance with no substance, no heat, no flicker of life.
The Crimson One's laugh scraped like glass on bone, a sound that made the memory-projections flutter and dim. "Soul? Ihave thousands of souls. Every reflection I've consumed, every mirror-drunk fool who peered too deep into forbidden glass. They all sing in me."
But I could hear them now, those trapped voices, and they weren't singing with him, they were crying out against him, a chorus of the devoured trying desperately to be remembered as more than food.
"But not with you." Silvyr stepped forward, his constellation eyes bright with recognition and ancient sorrow. "They're prisoners, not partners. That's why you need our bond, you're hoping it will teach you what you destroyed in yourself."
The temperature dropped so suddenly that my breath misted silver in the air. Frost spread across the stage in spirals that looked almost like Seraphina's tears, beautiful and cold and touched with the weight of eternal grief. The Crimson One's carefully maintained form began to crack along invisible fault lines, revealing the void beneath like darkness bleeding through broken glass.
"I can teach you the original binding." His voice took on a desperate edge, the practiced cruelty giving way to raw need. "The one Seraphina and I discovered before... before it went wrong. A binding that doesn't just unite two beings but transforms them into something greater."
The offer hung in the air between us like poisoned honey, sweet and tempting and absolutely deadly. I could feel its pull, could imagine the power it would bring, the certainty it promised. No more questions, no more doubt, no more painful choosing between love and duty.
"Something like you?" I let the ghost-melody rise in my throat, not as weapon but as ward, weaving it around us like armor made of sound and memory. "Empty and eternal and endlessly hungry?"
"Something perfect." The Crimson One reached toward us, and where his fingers passed, reality thinned like fabric worn too fine. Through the gaps, I glimpsed the true scope of his hunger, not just for power or pleasure, but for the capacity to feel anything at all. "No more questions, no more doubt, no more painful choosing. Just existence without the burden of self."
