Page 73 of A Taste of Silver
The crowd parted for Aurea like water before a ship's prow, but their eyes tracked her movement with hunger poorly disguised by courtesy. These weren't random courtiers, each face belonged to someone with power, with lineage, with a vested interest in controlling what she represented.
A few of them I recognized from my years of watching. Lord Castellan from the eastern provinces, whose family had built their fortune on Mirror-glass trade. Lady Vespera, whose grandmother had supposedly been the last to speak with a Mirror Queen before the Great Sundering. Duke Malthorn, whose very presence made the air taste of rust and old blood.
They'd been waiting for this moment, for a Mirror Queen's heir to finally emerge from hiding. Waiting with the patience of predators who knew their prey had nowhere left to run.
"Lady Solis." Aldric's voice carried new undertones, not quite human anymore but not yet Other. The sound sent shivers through the assembled crowd, several courtiers shifting uneasily as they recognized the change in their prince.
The circle drawn at his feet pulsed with dormant power, intricate patterns that spoke of months of preparation. This wasn't hastily drawn, this was masterwork, every line calculated to contain and channel forces that shouldn't be touched by mortal hands. Geometric precision married to arcane knowledge, creating something that existed at the intersection of mathematics and madness. The very air above the circle shimmered with potential, reality already beginning to thin inpreparation for whatever working they intended. How had they done it though?
As I looked at it I realized that this was just a manifestation of the circle and that the actual circle was drawn somewhere else, somewhere safe. Looking at it for more than a few seconds at a time made my teeth ache.
I recognized binding signatures older than the kingdom itself. These were patterns from the time before the Sundering, when the boundaries between realms were more suggestion than law.
Aurea studied the circle with those silver eyes that saw too much, her gaze tracing patterns I knew she understood better than any of them expected. The knowledge was written in her bones, muscle memory that had survived even the most thorough suppressions. The marks beneath her gloves were singing, I could hear them through our bond, a constant thrum of barely contained power that made my chest tight with equal parts pride and dread.
"Your circle has a flaw," she said, her voice carrying the casual confidence of someone stating an obvious fact. Each word fell into the silence like a stone into still water, creating ripples of unease among the watching nobles.
Drell's head snapped up from his tome, silver spectacles sliding down his nose as his eyes widened with academic indignation. "Impossible. I've checked every calculation, every intersection point. The mathematical foundations are flawless?—"
"Not in the construction." Aurea stepped forward, her dress shifting like liquid starlight around her legs, each movement causing the suppressant threads to glitter with frustrated energy. "In the assumption. You've built it to contain one type of power, expecting me to stand where you've designated, to move as you've choreographed."
She paused at the edge of the circle, close enough that the lines began to glow in response to her proximity. The assembled crowd leaned forward as one, their collective breath creating a whisper of anticipation that made the very air tremble.
She smiled, and it was her mother's smile, sharp as winter mornings and twice as dangerous. "But what happens when the performance changes mid-scene?"
Before anyone could respond, she stepped off the assigned marks with deliberate precision, her heel coming down exactly three inches outside the designated position.
The effect was immediate and violent. The circle's energy, calibrated for a specific configuration, suddenly had nowhere to go. Power backlashed through the air like a whip crack, sending several courtiers stumbling backward with cries of alarm. Lady Vespera's mask shattered, revealing a face aged beyond her apparent years. Duke Malthorn's ceremonial sword began to vibrate in its sheath, metal singing with harmonics that shouldn't exist.
But Aurea was already moving, pulling a vial from somewhere in the folds of her dress. When had she grabbed that? The glass container was warm against the ghostlight, filled with liquid that swirled with its own luminescence. She uncorked it with her teeth, the motion fluid and practiced despite the chaos erupting around us.
Blood. Her blood, silver-bright and impossibly warm, dripped onto the floor as she drew her own circle with movements that bypassed thought entirely. Each drop that fell created a small crater in the floor, the impact far greater than physics should have allowed.
The pattern she created intersected Aldric's at precise angles, not destroying but transforming, turning his cage into something altogether different. Where her blood met his lines, whatever they had been drawn from, the lines began to changecolor, shifting from white to silver to something that existed beyond the visible spectrum entirely.
"Heat," she said, pressing her bloodied palm to the intersection point.
The air ignited.
Not with fire but with potential, with the raw stuff of transformation made visible.
Silver threads erupted from her touch, weaving through both circles until they became one complex mandala that hurt to look at directly. The temperature rose until breath became difficult, until the very concepts of solid and liquid began to blur at the edges of perception. The crowd pressed back, masks beginning to melt at their edges, revealing glimpses of faces that had been hidden for good reason.
My own hands trembled as I watched her work, torn between admiration and the desperate need to pull her away from danger. She was magnificent, no longer the confused herbalist I'd first encountered but the Mirror Queen she'd been born to become.
Power flowed through her like water through a perfectly crafted channel, controlled and devastating in equal measure. But the magic she was channeling would exact a price. It always did, and the cost was written in the tremor of her fingers, the tightness around her eyes that spoke of pain held at bay through sheer force of will.
"Hold," she commanded, and her hand found mine without looking, our fingers interlacing with practiced ease.
The contact sent lightning through every nerve ending I possessed, but this time I was ready for it. Through our touch, I felt the enormous strain she was under, muscles locked rigid as she maintained that precise temperature between states. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a caged bird, each beat sending waves of heat through our joined hands. This wasthe impossible balance, too much heat and reality would melt entirely, too little and nothing would change. Every second of maintaining this equilibrium was burning through her reserves at a terrifying rate.
Sweat beaded on her forehead, each drop catching light like fallen stars. The suppressant threads in her dress were beginning to smoke, their containment failing as her power overwhelmed their capacity to bind it. Soon they would burn away entirely, leaving her exposed to the full force of her inheritance.
Together we breathed. In, hold, out. Our rhythm synchronized until I couldn't tell where her breath ended and mine began. The crowd around us had gone silent, even the whispers from Drell's ancient tome falling quiet as they recognized what was happening. We were stealing his ritual, yes, but more than that, we were demonstrating what true unity looked like. Not dominance, not consumption, but perfect synchronization of separate wills choosing to work as one.
Through the bond, I felt Aurea's consciousness touch mine, her thoughts flowing like quicksilver through the connection we shared.Are you ready for this?she asked without words, her mental voice tinged with exhaustion but unshakeable determination.
Always,I replied, meaning it with every fragmented piece of my existence.
