Page 52 of A Taste of Silver
I moved closer to the fractured glass, ignoring Melora's sharp intake of breath behind me. "Teach me what?"
"The ghost-melody that runs beneath all reflection magic. Only those with Mirror Queen blood can perceive it." His eyes met mine through the broken surface. "It's how you'll learn to enhance your power. To make the barriers between worlds bend to your will instead of breaking under it."
The air between us seemed to thicken, charged with possibility and something else, a pull that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the way he looked at me. As if I were the answer to a question he'd been asking for centuries.
"Show me."
Silvyr pressed his palm against his side of the glass. "Close your eyes. Feel for the vibration beneath the sound. It's older than the mirrors themselves."
I let my eyes drift shut, extending my awareness beyond the room's boundaries. At first, there was only the complex harmony of awakening mirrors. Then, beneath it, I caught something else. A rhythm that matched the pulse of my silver marks. A melody written in frequencies that bypassed the ears entirely, resonating in the spaces between atoms.
"I can hear it." Wonder crept into my voice. "It sounds like..."
"Like coming home," he finished softly.
My eyes snapped open. The longing in his voice was a physical ache, mirrored in the way his fingers splayed against the glass as if trying to reach through.
"Aurea," he began, his voice dropping to something intimate, private, meant only for me despite Melora's presence in the room.
"Oh, for the love of shattered glass."
We both jerked back from the mirror as Syra materialized in its surface, her fractal features arranged in an expression of long-suffering amusement. Behind her, visible through the reflection, stretched what looked unmistakably like a workshop. Shelves lined with glass vessels, tools scattered across wooden tables, the familiar chaos of a craftsman's space.
"You two are the only couple in existence who could possibly overcome the fundamental laws of reality through sheer romantic tension," Syra continued, her mismatched eyes sparkling with mischief. "It's almost impressive how your combined stubbornness might actually succeed where everyone else has failed."
I leaned closer to the mirror, studying the background behind the spirit. "Syra, where are you?"
"Mmm?" She glanced over her shoulder as if just remembering the workshop existed. "Oh, this old place. Just a little shop I've been... maintaining. Someone has to keep the glass flowing, even when the glassblower isn't?—"
Her words cut off abruptly as something crashed in the background. The sound of shattering glass echoed through the reflection, and Syra spun toward the noise with sudden urgency.
"Change without breaking," she muttered, her usual playful demeanor fracturing into something more serious. "That's the trick, isn't it? To transform without?—"
Another crash. This one closer, accompanied by a sound that made my silver marks flare with recognition, the distinctive whistle of molten glass being worked.
"Syra." My voice sharpened. "What's happening?"
But she was already fading, her form becoming translucent as her attention was pulled elsewhere. "Remember what I said about the tenth time being different? Let's hope?—"
The mirror went dark, showing only my own reflection and Silvyr's concerned face behind me.
"The glassblower's workshop," I said, pieces clicking together in my mind. "It was across the street from Melora's apothecary."
Melora stood so quickly her chair scraped against the stone floor. "That workshop has been abandoned for twenty years. The last glassblower died in the prohibition raids."
"Then who's working glass there now?" I turned back to the mirror, where Silvyr's expression had grown thoughtful.
"Someone who understands what Syra meant," he said slowly. "Change without breaking. It's not just philosophy, it's technique. The way you work glass to transform it without shattering."
The ghost-melody I'd been learning to hear suddenly shifted, taking on new harmonics. Through the window, I could see lights in the distance, not the ordinary glow of oil lamps but something brighter, whiter. The color of heated glass.
"The workshop isn't abandoned," I realized. "It's just hidden. Like everything else that matters in this kingdom."
Silvyr's hand pressed against the glass again, and this time when our palms aligned, the barrier between us seemed gossamer-thin. "The melody, Aurea. Can you feel how it's changing? Growing stronger?"
I could. The ghost-song beneath the mirrors' harmony was building toward something, a crescendo that would either bridge our worlds or tear them both apart. And somewhere across the kingdom, in a supposedly abandoned workshop, someone was working glass with techniques that predated the prohibition.
"Change without breaking," I whispered, understanding flooding through me like silver fire. "That's what we've beendoing wrong, isn't it? Trying to force the barriers down instead of learning to reshape them."
