Page 10 of A Taste of Silver
I pulled the jar free. When I opened the lid, frost escaped like breath in winter, cold against my skin.
"What are those?" Eirian stepped closer.
"Something impossible." I selected three petals, each one perfect. "If you want a binding strong enough to hold a mirror prince, these are essential."
"Mirror prince?"
I'd said too much. But the knowledge from the hidden text wouldn't stay buried. "That's what it is. What's calling through your mirrors. Not a demon or a ghost but something older. Something that exists between."
My fingers moved without conscious thought, gathering other ingredients. Silverleaf. Essence of forget-me-not. Crystallized starlight, another impossible thing that sat plain as day on Melora's shelf.
The cut happened as I reached for the ritual blade. Just a nick across my thumb, though the material of the glove as though it wasn’t even there as my hand brushed the edge. Blood welled from the cut, dark red and…no. My breath caught. It wasn't just red. Swirling within the crimson were threads of pure, liquid silver, catching the candlelight like spun starlight. It was impossible. It was part of me. My stomach lurched.
"Your blood..." Eirian's voice was a choked whisper from a world away. He'd seen. Gods, he'd seen.
I pressed cloth to the cut, but too late.
"I need to return to your estate." The words emerged calm, though nothing inside me felt steady. "Tonight. The binding must happen while the connection is strong."
"You're one of them." His eyes went wide. "The old bloodlines. The ones who could?—"
"Do you want my help or not?"
He nodded, quick and sharp. "My carriage waits outside."
I gathered the ingredients into my satchel, movements automatic while my mind raced. The moonbloom petals shouldn't exist. My blood shouldn't run silver. The serpent shouldn't know my name.
But it did. They did. Everything impossible was becoming real.
The ride through empty streets passed in tense silence. Snow fell heavier now, muffling the world in white. I caught a glimpse of our reflection in the carriage window and looked away before I could see if my eyes had changed again.
The estate loomed against the night sky, and it was exactly as I had left it, silver light poured from every window. It pulsed in rhythm with my headache, with my heartbeat, with something deeper than both.
"The servants fled." Eirian led me through the front door. "After the mirrors uncovered themselves, they ran. Said the house was cursed."
The entry hall was a house of watching eyes. Every shroud was gone. The mirrors stood bare, their surfaces not still but rippling like dark water under a new moon. And from the depths of each one, the serpent stared back at me.
Not different angles of the same creature but the same angle repeated endlessly. Those constellation eyes tracked my movement as I walked past. When I turned left, every reflection turned right, maintaining that terrible focus.
"It's stronger than before." My voice echoed in the empty house.
"Can you still bind it?"
I didn't answer. Couldn't, because the serpent had started moving. In every mirror, that massive form uncoiled, scales catching light that didn't exist in the physical room.
The study door stood open. Inside, the original mirror, the one where this started, hung larger than I remembered. Or perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps I was smaller in its presence.
The serpent filled the frame completely now. No background, no mirror realm visible behind it. Just scales and eyes and patient, terrible attention.
I approached slowly, satchel heavy with impossible ingredients. Each step forward made the silver in my blood sing louder.
You came back.Its voice resonated through glass and bone equally.I knew you would.
"I came to bind you."
With moonbloom petals that grow in my garden? With starlight I breathed into being? With blood that runs silver because you're already mine?
The headache reached crescendo. I pressed palms to my temples, trying to think through the pain.
