Page 19 of A Taste of Silver
"Your name." I pulled back enough to see his face, to watch stars wheel through his dark eyes. "Silvyr. But that's not all of it, is it?"
"Names have power here. Speaking them changes things."
"Tell me anyway."
He smiled, and for a moment looked exactly like the boy from my memory, young and eager and unburdened by centuries of solitude.
"Silvyr Ashenheart Nightweaver, Prince of the Forgotten Reach, Guardian of the Last Mirror, Keeper of Abandoned Reflections."
Each title resonated through the garden, making the cracks in reality seal themselves, the leaking light reverse its flow. The garden responded to his true naming by becoming more solid, more real, as if his identity gave it permission to exist.
"And you?" His hand returned to my face, thumb tracing the line of my jaw. "Do you remember your true name?"
I opened my mouth to say I didn't, couldn't, but what came out instead was, "Aurea?—"
The word hung incomplete. There was more, I could feel it, pressing against the inside of my teeth like caged birds.
"Aurea Miren?—"
Still incomplete. The garden held its breath, waiting.
His lips brushed my ear. "Names spoken in this garden become truth. Be careful what you claim."
But careful had never been my nature, not truly. The silver marks on my arms flared bright as stars, and I felt something deep in my chest unlock, a door I hadn't known was barred swinging wide.
"My name is Aurea Miren?—"
The garden began to dissolve. Not cracking this time but fading, becoming transparent like morning mist touched by sun. I could see through it to another place, my room in the apothecary, my body in the bed, silver petals falling from nowhere to cover my sleeping form like snow.
"No." I gripped his arms, trying to anchor myself in the dream. "Not yet. There's so much I need to?—"
"This is just the beginning." He was fading too, becoming translucent, though his eyes remained solid black with their cargo of stars. "Every time you sleep, you come closer to remembering. Every dream brings you home."
"To the garden?"
"To me."
The admission should have sounded possessive. Instead it sounded lost, like a prayer from someone who'd forgotten how to hope but couldn't stop trying.
I was being pulled backward, up, through layers of consciousness that felt like swimming through honey made of light. The last solid thing was his hand in mine, his thumb still tracing those endless circles on my palm.
"Your name," he called as I rose toward waking. "Remember your true name."
The garden collapsed into a single point of light, then expanded outward in a flash that tasted of silver and sorrow. I gasped awake in my bed, spine arched, hands clutching at air that had held him seconds before.
Dawn crept through my window, painting everything gray and rose. My breath misted in the cold air, but I barely noticed because covering my bed, my floor, every surface of my small room, were silver petals that shouldn't exist.
They were already beginning to fade, becoming transparent as morning strengthened its hold on the world. But oneremained solid where it had fallen on my lips, tasting of frost and memory and a name I almost remembered.
"Miren."
The middle part of my name, yes, but also something more. A meaning I'd lost. A piece of myself that had been carved away and was only now beginning to grow back, tender as new skin over a wound.
I sat up, silver petals cascading from my hair, my clothes, my skin. Each one whispered as it fell, speaking words in that ancient language I'd used in the memory of the failed ritual.
Remember, they said. Remember who you were. Remember what you promised. Remember him.
One petal remained in my palm, refusing to fade with the others. I closed my fingers around it, feeling its edges sharp as truth against my skin.
