Page 30 of A Taste of Silver
A hand broke the surface.
Not emerging from the water, emerging from the reflection itself. Fingers too long, too pale, with scales catching the light where knuckles should be. Then an arm, then shoulders… my breath caught in my throat.
Silvyr pulled himself partially free, but stopped at the waist, as if the puddle's edge formed an impenetrable barrier. His shape wavered, flickering between man and serpent with each labored breath. Scales traced his jawline, disappeared, returned. His hair moved like liquid silver, defying gravity and logic equally.
"You shouldn't be here." The words left my mouth before I could stop them.
"Neither should you." His voice echoed strangely, as if coming from very far away or very deep beneath something. "Yet here we are, drawn together like a moth to a silver flame."
I dropped to my knees beside the puddle, not caring that the ice soaked through my dress. This close, I could see how much effort his manifestation required. Sweat, or something like it, beaded on his forehead. His edges blurred and sharpened with each heartbeat, as if he couldn't quite decide what shape to hold.
"You're weaker here. In the mortal realm."
He laughed, a humorless sound. "Observant. Without a proper mirror, without an anchor, I'm barely more than intention and desperate hope."
"Then why risk it?"
"Because you're riding into a trap, and I'm fool enough to care."
The marks beneath my gloves flared hot. I pressed my palms against my thighs, willing them to quiet. "The court summoned me. I can't refuse."
"The court summoned you because they know what you're becoming." Silvyr's form solidified slightly, fear lending him focus. "Every mirror in the capital screaming your name? They know that means a Mirrorwalker's power is awakening. They want to bind you before you realize what you can do."
"Bind me how?"
"Marriage. Magical contracts. Memory alteration if you resist." His hand reached toward me, stopping just short of breaking the puddle's surface tension. "Or execution, if they decide you're too dangerous to control."
"You don't know that."
"I know the court. I've watched them for centuries through their mirrors, seen how they handle threats to their power." His form wavered, scales spreading across his throat. "Help me escape this prison, and I'll restore every moment they stole from you. Every memory, every piece of power, every truth about what you are."
The offer hung in the frigid air, a perfect, terrible thing.
"That's your bargain?" I kept my voice level despite the way my pulse hammered. "My help for my memories?"
"Our memories," he said, his voice dropping so low it was barely a whisper. "I lost pieces too, when the binding failed. Pieces of us."
I studied his face, what I could see of it through the constant shifting between forms. Beautiful and terrible, familiar and foreign. The boy from my dreams aged into something that wasn't quite a man.
"Tell me why I forgot, and I'll consider it."
"You already know why." His fingers curled against the reflection's surface. "The binding would have killed you. I made a choice. Your life over your memories. I'd make it again."
"That wasn't your choice to make."
"Wasn't it?" The serpent emerged stronger now, scales replacing skin along his arms. "You were young, burning through your own soul to save me. What should I have done? Watched you die for a curse that was never your burden?"
Heat built behind my eyes. Not tears, I couldn't give him tears, but something hotter, angrier. "You should have trusted me to know my own limits."
"Your limits?" A laugh tore from him, the sound of something beautiful shattering. "You had no limits when it came to saving others. You would have burned yourself to ash if it meant—" He stopped, his form solidifying as he fought for control. "It doesn't matter now. What matters is that you're walking into the same court that destroyed your mother, your bloodline, everyone who carried the Mirror Queen's power. And you're doing it alone."
"I'm not alone." The words came out before I could think them through. "You're here."
Something shifted in his expression, surprise, hope, and wariness tangled together. "A shadow in a puddle isn't much protection."
"Tell me about the Crimson One." I ask, remembering the note that I had seen scrawled in my own handwriting on one of the pages I’d hidden in my mattress. For some reason it felt important to know who the Crimson One was before I made it to the palace, before the Crown made me bend the knee and submit to whatever it was they wanted from me.
The change was immediate. Silvyr's form contracted, becoming more serpent than man in an instant. "How do you know that name?"
