Page 53 of A Taste of Silver
Silvyr's smile was like starlight breaking through clouds. "Now you're beginning to understand the real magic, my little flame."
The endearment sent heat racing through my veins, and I had to resist the urge to press closer to the glass. Behind me, Melora cleared her throat pointedly, but I could feel her watching us with something that might have been recognition.
As if she'd seen this same dangerous dance between a Mirror Queen and her bonded before.
As if she knew exactly how it was destined to end.
A soft scraping interrupted my thoughts. I turned toward the sound, my marks flaring in recognition before my mind could process what I was seeing.
The servant from before, Nira, emerged from behind a tapestry I hadn't noticed before. Her plain brown dress was dust-covered, and her eyes held the furtive look of someone who'd been moving through spaces she shouldn't be.
"M'lady." She glanced nervously at Melora, then back to me. "There's something you need to see. Both of you."
Melora straightened in her chair. "Nira, this isn't the time for?—"
"Begging your pardon, but it is exactly the time." Nira moved to the wall behind my mirror, pressing her hand to what looked like solid stone. A section swung inward with barely a whisper. "The hidden passages your mother used. The ones I started to show you earlier? They go deeper than you know."
The opening revealed darkness that seemed to drink the light from my silver marks. Cold air flowed from within, carrying scents of stone and something else, ozone, like the air before lightning strikes.
"Where does it lead?" I asked, already moving toward the passage.
"The old sections. The parts they built the palace over." Nira's voice dropped. "The parts they thought they'd sealed forever."
I glanced back at Melora, who had gone rigid in her chair. "You knew about this."
"Your mother made me promise never to speak of them." Melora's hands trembled. "Child, some doors?—"
"Should never be opened," I finished. "Yes, you've mentioned that. Repeatedly." I stepped toward the passage. "But some doors open themselves when it's time."
The Awakening Chord's harmonies seemed to emanate from the darkness ahead, growing stronger as I approached. My silver marks responded, brightening until they cast their own ethereal glow.
"I'm going with you," Melora said, standing on unsteady legs.
"No." I turned back to her. "Stay here. If the guards check on us and find both of us missing..."
Melora's face crumpled with worry and something that looked like grief. "You look so much like her when you're being stubborn."
I managed a smile. "Good. Maybe I'll be half as brave as she was."
The passage led downward at a steep angle, the stone walls giving way to something older. Crystal veins threaded through the rock here, pulsing with their own inner light that matched the rhythm of my heartbeat. The Awakening Chord grew stronger with each step, no longer just sound but a vibration I could feel in my bones.
Nira moved ahead with the confidence of long practice. "Your mother brought me here once, when you were very small. Said you'd need to know the way someday."
"Know the way to what?"
"The heart of it all. The original Mirror Chamber."
The passage opened into a cavern that stole my breath. Every surface was mirror. Not glass mounted on walls, but the walls themselves, as if the chamber had been carved from a single, massive crystal. The mirrors reflected not just my image but layers upon layers of it, extending into infinity in every direction.
And in each reflection, I was different. Older in some, younger in others. In one, I wore a crown that seemed to be made of captured starlight. In another, my eyes burned with silver fire bright enough to illuminate the entire chamber. Some reflections showed me with longer hair, shorter hair, scars I'd never earned, smiles I'd never worn.
"All the possibilities," I whispered, understanding flooding through me. "This is what the Mirror Queens saw. What they protected."
Movement in my peripheral vision. One of the reflections turned toward me independently of my own movement. The figure was tall, ethereal, with silver hair that moved like liquid mercury and eyes that held depths of sorrow.
Vaen.
Not as he'd been in the portrait, but older, transformed by whatever bargain he'd made. His form flickered between solid and translucent, caught between realms like Silvyr but in a different way. More real, more present, but also more lost.
