Page 75 of A Taste of Silver
Whatever came next, we would face it as we'd always meant to. Together. Unified. Unbreakable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Chapter 28
Aurea
I took a breath that tasted of silver and starlight, then set my plan in motion with trembling hands that somehow moved with absolute certainty. The stage transformed around us with the fluid grace of nightmare becoming lucid dream, reality reshaping itself at the whims of powers that had no business existing in the mortal realm, if we could even say we were in the mortal realm anymore. The very air had grown thick with magic, pressing against my skin like warm honey, making each movement feel deliberate and weighted with consequence.
Mirror panels erupted from the floorboards like silver teeth breaking through bone, each one emerging with a crystalline shriek that resonated through my bones and set my teeth on edge. The sound bypassed rational hearing entirely, vibrating directly through the silver marks on my arms until the metal taste flooded my mouth and made my jaw ache. They angled and repositioned themselves with deliberate precision, their movements accompanied by crystalline chimes that created a symphony of impossible harmonics. The melody seemed toreach into my chest cavity and pluck at my ribs like harp strings, each note finding new pathways through my skeleton that I'd never known existed.
The cacophony made my very soul ring like a struck bell, the frequencies somehow synchronized with the rhythm of my heartbeat until I couldn't tell where the music ended and my pulse began. My silver marks responded to each crescendo, flaring brighter along my arms and sending tendrils of heat racing up toward my shoulders, past the boundaries I'd carefully maintained for so many years.
Each mirror surface caught and threw back our images in fragments that defied everything I'd ever learned about vision and the fundamental nature of light itself. My silver dress multiplied into a thousand stars scattered across impossible angles, the fabric seeming to flow like liquid mercury in some reflections while remaining perfectly still in others. The contradiction should have been jarring, yet somehow my mind accepted both versions as equally true, reality bending to accommodate paradox.
Silvyr's constellation eyes became an infinite regression of light in the fractured surfaces, each pupil containing another set of stars that contained another set of eyes, creating a tunnel of illumination that stretched into dimensions that shouldn't exist. The sight made my head spin with vertigo, as if I were looking down a well that had no bottom, falling upward into space that folded back on itself. And overlaying it all, the Crimson One's monstrous form refracted into aspects that hurt to perceive directly, his geometry spread across multiple planes of existence in ways that made my brain ache with the effort of processing such wrongness.
The remaining chandeliers above us shattered without warning, not breaking in any conventional sense but dissolving into their component crystals like sugar melting in rain. Eachfragment hung suspended in air that had grown thick as honey, rotating slowly on invisible axes while catching light that had no earthly source. They scattered impossible colors—hues that existed beyond the spectrum mortal eyes were designed to see, painting the air in shades of ultraviolet dreams and infrared whispers.
Crimson bled into silver like watercolors on wet paper, the transition so gradual yet so complete that I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment one became the other. Silver fractured into rainbow edges that my eyes couldn't quite focus on, creating chromatic aberrations that seemed to shift whenever I looked directly at them. The very air grew dense with refracted light until breathing became an act of conscious will, each inhale requiring effort as if the atmosphere itself had been transformed into something between gas and liquid crystal.
"Clever little queen," the Crimson One's voice emerged from every surface simultaneously, a chorus of hunger that seemed to emanate from the mirrors themselves rather than any single throat. The words reverberated through the crystalline maze with a harmonic resonance that made the bones in my skull vibrate. Each syllable multiplied and distorted until it became a symphony of malevolent desire that made my silver marks burn beneath my skin like brands pressed fresh from the forge. "Building a maze to trap yourself within. How deliciously predictable."
But I wasn't building a maze, not in any sense he understood, and his fundamental misunderstanding of my purpose sent a thrill of grim satisfaction through my chest. The feeling was sharp and clean, cutting through the overwhelming sensory assault like a blade through silk. My hands moved in patterns I'd never consciously learned, muscle memory surfacing from depths I'd forgotten existed, from before the suppressions had locked away entire decades of accumulated knowledge.
The movements felt as natural as breathing, each gesture flowing into the next with mathematical precision. My fingers traced geometries in the air that seemed to leave faint silver trails, hieroglyphs written in starlight that hung for just a moment before dissolving back into the charged atmosphere. The knowledge flowed from some deep well within me, ancestral wisdom passed down through bloodlines that had danced with mirrors for generations uncounted, each movement a word in a language older than the current civilization.
Each gesture was deliberate, calculated, part of a greater design that I understood instinctively even as my conscious mind struggled to keep pace with the implications. This wasn't magic in any conventional sense, it was architecture on a dimensional level, the building of spaces that existed in the gaps between reality's established rules.
The mirror panels responded like orchestra members following a conductor's baton, sliding along invisible tracks with fluid precision that defied the weight of solid glass. They moved to create corridors that folded back on themselves in impossible ways, passages that somehow occupied the same space while leading to entirely different destinations. These weren't ordinary hallways but geometric impossibilities that made my mathematician's training rebel even as my newfound magical instincts embraced their elegant wrongness.
Doorways opened onto their own thresholds, creating perfect loops that somehow advanced the traveler's position. Staircases climbed in perfect circles while gaining elevation that couldn't be accounted for by any rational measurement. The mathematics hurt to contemplate directly, requiring a kind of mental flexibility that mortal minds weren't designed to possess, yet here I was, weaving space like a seamstress working with fabric that existed in more dimensions than human perception could properly map.
"The floor," I said to Silvyr, my voice barely above a whisper but carrying through our bond with perfect clarity, bypassing sound entirely to resonate directly in his consciousness. The words felt heavy with intention, weighted with the significance of what I was asking. Through our connection, I could feel his attention sharpen, focus narrowing to laser precision as he prepared to follow my lead into territory neither of us fully understood.
Understanding flooded through our bond like water breaking through a dam, immediate and complete and tinged with the electric thrill of shared purpose. He didn't need explanations or elaborations, our connection carried not just my words but my entire intent, the full scope of what I envisioned painted in silver fire across his consciousness. The sensation was intimate beyond anything physical, thoughts flowing between us with such fluidity that for a moment I lost track of where my awareness ended and his began.
Together we reached for the polished marble beneath our feet, not with our hands but with will made manifest, our combined power seeking the mirror-bright surface that Aldric's meticulous preparations had unknowingly provided. The stone had been polished to perfection, its surface so flawless it could serve as a mirror in its own right, exactly what we needed for what came next.
The marble floor responded to our combined will like water remembering it could become ice, the transformation rippling outward from where our power touched in concentric waves of liquid silver. Where the change reached, the stone's surface began to liquefy without losing its structural integrity, becoming something between solid and reflection, a threshold that existed in multiple states simultaneously. The sensation beneath my feet was deeply unsettling. It was solid enough to support my weight, yet yielding like the surface of a perfectly still pond.
"You dare manipulate my working?" Aldric's voice cracked with indignation and barely concealed fear, the carefully maintained composure of royal bearing finally beginning to fracture under the weight of events spinning beyond his control. His hand moved instinctively to draw power from the binding circle he'd so carefully crafted, but the geometric lines had already been transformed beyond his understanding or ability to command. What had been his masterwork was now something else entirely, repurposed by forces he'd never learned to properly respect.
"Your working was always meant to be stolen," I said, not taking my eyes off the shifting floor beneath us as silver spread through the marble like veins of liquid starlight. The transformation was beautiful and terrible, each ripple carrying echoes of power that made the air itself hum with potential. "Every mirror knows how to reverse itself. Every reflection understands the fundamental nature of inversion."
The words came from that same deep well of ancestral knowledge, truths I'd somehow always known but never had reason to speak aloud. The binding circle hadn't been Aldric's creation so much as his discovery, patterns that existed in the fundamental structure of reality itself, waiting for someone with enough audacity to trace them into existence.
The Crimson One circled us like smoke given predatory intent, his form fragmenting and reforming with each step in ways that made tracking his movement an exercise in controlled madness. One moment he appeared as writhing shadow, the next as burning crimson light, then as something that hurt to perceive directly, geometry that folded through spaces the human eye wasn't equipped to process. "The little queen thinks she understands mirrors," he said, amusement and menace weaving through his voice like poison through honey. "Shall Ishow her what they truly remember? Shall I demonstrate the full scope of their accumulated hunger?"
Before I could respond, before I could even think to respond, he struck, not with physical force but with memory itself, raw and unfiltered and sharp enough to cut. Every mirror panel in our constructed labyrinth suddenly blazed with images from the past, scenes I'd spent years trying to forget surfacing with crystal clarity that made my chest tighten with remembered pain.
I saw myself at seven, throat raw from screaming Silvyr's name until I tasted copper and silver, my voice breaking on syllables that carried more desperate love than any child should be capable of feeling. I saw my mother in her final moments, sealing dimensional doorways with her own life force, her face serene with acceptance even as her body crumbled to ash that smelled of burnt starlight. I saw Vaen making his bargain with entities whose names hurt to think too directly about, trading mortality for my survival with the casual certainty of someone who'd already accepted his own doom.
The weight of accumulated grief and loss threatened to crush me where I stood, pressing down on my shoulders like the entire history of my bloodline demanding acknowledgment. But Silvyr's presence at my back kept me upright, his serpent-fire flowing through our connection, not consuming or overwhelming, but supporting, creating a foundation of cold starlight beneath the tide of memory that threatened to sweep away my carefully constructed sense of self.
Through our bond, I felt his own memories rising in response, centuries of loneliness in the spaces between reflections, the ache of incomplete existence, the desperate hunger for contact with anything real. Yet underneath it all was his absolute, unwavering devotion to me, a constant that had survived dimensional separation and the slow erosion of hope.That devotion became my anchor, allowing me to stand firm against the assault of remembrance.
"The binding must have an anchor," Aldric said, his earlier panic transforming into desperate calculation as he watched his carefully laid plans crumble around him. The royal mask was fully gone now, replaced by the naked ambition that had driven him to make bargains with entities he couldn't properly comprehend. "If you won't serve willingly—if you insist on this destructive course?—"
