A Taste of Silver

Chapter 1

Aurea

Wind sliced through my wool cloak like shards of glass, each gust threatening to tear the satchel from my silver-gloved grip.

The leather strap cut into my shoulder through layers of clothing, but I pressed forward into the white void that swallowed Virelda whole.

Snow fell in thick curtains, each flake absorbing sound until the world existed only in the radius of my next step.

My boots punched through the fresh powder.

One, two, three steps before the drifts erased all evidence of my passage.

The vials in my satchel clinked against each other, a crystalline melody that the storm devoured instantly.

I shifted the bag higher, cradling it against my ribs, a prayer against the cold that my own heat might keep the elixirs from freezing.

Lord Valtier's estate had to be close. The innkeeper's directions echoed in my mind, Follow the north road until you reach the twisted oak stump, then bear left at the stone marker.

But the oak had all but vanished beneath snow hours ago, and stone markers looked identical when buried to their tops in white.

A shape materialized through the blizzard, angular, deliberate.

Dark stone walls rose from the landscape like wounds in pristine flesh.

My shoulders dropped a fraction. The Valtier estate.

Windows lined the upper floors, but frost crawled across every pane in patterns too perfect to be natural.

The crystalline formations spiraled and branched, creating a lattice that turned glass opaque.

No accident. Accidents involving reflection didn't happen in Virelda. They weren't allowed to.

The iron gates stood open, their hinges groaning in the wind.

Fresh wheel tracks carved grooves in the snow, someone had arrived recently, or left.

I followed the path toward the main entrance, noting how sawdust covered even the puddles from melted snow.

Every possible surface that might show my face back to me had been carefully obscured.

The massive oak door swung inward before I could knock. A young servant girl stood in the doorway, her gaze fixed on my boots.

"The apothecary from Melora's?"

I nodded, stepping into the entrance hall. The sudden warmth of the hall was a wave of heat that made my frozen cheeks blaze with pins and needles. The girl's eyes flicked up, caught on the silver threading of my gloves, then dropped again.

"His Lordship waits in the study." The girl's voice barely rose above the crackling of logs in the nearby hearth. "May I take your cloak?"

I unwound the snow-heavy wool from my shoulders but kept the satchel close.

The entrance hall stretched before me, all dark wood and darker shadows.

Paintings lined the walls, portraits, landscapes, anything but the banned mirrors that would have graced such a space in another time.

Black cloth draped over rectangular shapes at regular intervals along the corridor.

Some cloths bore wax seals at the corners, red stamps pressed deep into the fabric as if to ensure they'd never accidentally fall away.

"This way." The servant girl led me down the hall, footsteps muffled by thick carpets.

I catalogued each covered surface as we passed.

The shapes beneath varied from ornate frames suggesting grand mirrors to smaller coverings likely hid hand glasses or decorative pieces.

One massive draping dominated an entire wall, its fabric pooling on the floor like a spreading shadow.

Whatever mirror hid beneath must have been magnificent once.

Now it existed as negative space, a void that drew the eye precisely because it offered nothing to see.

The study door stood ajar. Firelight danced through the gap, casting shadows that writhed across the hallway floor. The servant knocked twice.

"Enter."

Lord Eirian Valtier stood with his back to us, staring into the fire.

His velvet coat hung perfectly pressed, not a thread out of place, but his shoulders carried a tension that expensive tailoring couldn't hide.

When he turned, I caught the tremor in his hands before he clasped them behind his back.

Purple-black crescents carved hollows beneath his emerald eyes, a sleeplessness that no dim lighting could explain.

His blond curls remained perfectly styled, but a patch of golden stubble caught the firelight along his jaw. He'd missed a spot shaving.

"Miss Aurea. Thank you for coming in such weather."

"Lord Valtier." I set my satchel on the side table, careful not to disturb the papers scattered across its surface. "Your message mentioned an urgent matter."

"Yes." The word emerged clipped, forced through teeth that wanted to remain clenched. "Please, sit. Tea?"

He gestured to a pair of chairs near the fire. I chose the one that kept my back to the wall and gave me a clear view of both the door and the draped shapes throughout the room. Three more covered mirrors decorated this space. I recognized their forms despite the concealing cloth.

"Tea would be welcome." My fingers had begun to thaw, pins and needles dancing beneath the silver-threaded gloves.

Valtier rang a small bell. The same servant girl appeared, so quickly she must have been hovering just outside the door.

"Tea service. The silver set."

The girl's face paled. "The silver, m’lord?"

"Yes." His tone brooked no argument.

She vanished, leaving us in silence broken only by the fire's consumption of oak logs. Valtier remained standing, his gaze unfocused.

"When did the symptoms begin?" I kept my voice neutral, professional.

His laugh was a brittle, hollow sound that the firelight seemed to absorb. "Symptoms. Such a clinical word for what plagues me."

"Would you prefer I call it something else?"

"Call it what it is, a haunting. A curse." His fingers found his temple, pressing against what must have been a persistent headache. "Three weeks ago, it started simply. Dreams that felt too real. Whispers at the edge of hearing."

"And now?"

"Now the voice grows louder each night." His emerald eyes locked onto mine, desperate and searching. "It knows things about me that no one should know. Private things. Secret things."

I pulled a leather journal from my satchel, along with a charcoal stick. "Describe the voice."

"Sometimes male, sometimes female. Sometimes..." He paused, swallowing hard. "Sometimes it sounds like my own thoughts, but wrong. Twisted."

I made notes in the shorthand Melora had taught me, symbols that meant nothing to anyone who might glance over my shoulder. "Physical manifestations?"

Valtier's hand moved unconsciously to his left forearm. "I wake with marks. Scratches."

"May I see?"

He hesitated, then rolled up his sleeve. Fresh scratches crossed older ones in a lattice pattern across his skin, some scabbed over, others still angry red. They formed no discernible pattern, but their depth suggested considerable force.

"Do you live alone here?"

"Servants, of course. But no family, if that's what you're asking."

The door opened. The servant girl entered carrying a tray that rattled despite her obvious effort to keep it steady. The silver tea service gleamed in the firelight—teapot, cups, sugar bowl, cream pitcher. Every surface polished to mirror brightness.

My breath caught.

The girl set the tray on the low table between our chairs and fled without being dismissed. Valtier poured with hands that shook only slightly, the liquid amber in the firelight.

"Sugar?"

"No. Thank you."

I accepted the delicate cup, keeping my eyes fixed on the liquid within. But the teapot remained in my peripheral vision, its curved surface reflecting the room in distorted miniature. I shifted in my chair, angling away, but caught a glimpse—

Where my face should have been, the silver showed only empty space. A void in the shape of a woman.

My fingers tightened on the cup. Hot tea sloshed, nearly spilling. I set it down carefully on the side table, away from the reflective surfaces.

I kept my voice even, a disciplined calm that cost me a steadying breath. "Tell me about the covered mirrors."

Valtier's eyes sharpened. "You know the law."

"I know the law demands they be removed or destroyed. Covering them is—"

"A compromise." He stood abruptly, pacing to the fireplace. "This estate has been in my family for seven generations. Those mirrors are heirlooms. Priceless. I won't destroy history because of superstition."

"The prohibition exists for a reason."

"Does it?" He spun to face me. "Do you truly believe that mirrors cause madness? That reflection itself is dangerous?"

I chose my words carefully. "I believe that what people fear has power over them."

"A diplomatic answer." His smile held no warmth. "But not an honest one."

I opened my satchel, pulling out vials and packets with practiced efficiency. "Valerian root for sleep. Moonbell extract for clarity of mind. White sage to burn before bed as the smoke helps settle restless thoughts."

"Thoughts." He laughed again, that hollow sound. "You think I imagine it."

"I think you're exhausted, frightened, and isolated in a house full of banned objects." I began measuring dried leaves into a mortar. "The mind creates its own demons when given enough darkness to work with."

"Then explain this."

He strode to the largest draped mirror and grabbed a handful of black cloth.

"Lord Valtier, don't—"

He yanked. The fabric fell away like water, revealing an ornate mirror easily seven feet tall. The silver frame writhed with carved serpents, their scales so detailed they seemed to shift in the flickering light. The glass itself appeared black at first glance, as if it reflected nothing at all.

Then something moved within it.

I stood slowly, the pestle still gripped in my hand. The movement in the mirror didn't match anything in the room. It undulated. Serpentine. Too large to be contained by the frame yet somehow fitting perfectly within its borders.

"Every night," Valtier whispered. "Every night it calls to me."

The familiar motion of pestle against mortar anchored me. This is not a simple haunting. Valerian and moonbell are useless. What is in that glass? I forced myself to focus on grinding the herbs.

"How long have you been hearing it?" I kept my tone clinical, though my pulse hammered in my throat.

"Three weeks. Since the new moon."

The mortar grew warm beneath my hands. I added dried silver leaf, not for its medicinal properties, but because something deep in my memory insisted it would help. My hands moved without conscious thought, adding ingredients I couldn't name but somehow knew.

"Has anyone else heard it?"

"The servants won't enter this room anymore, with the rare exception." I assumed he was talking about the serving girl that just fled. It made sense why she hadn’t been the one to pour the tea now.

The mixture in the mortar began to shimmer, taking on a pearlescent quality that had nothing to do with the firelight. I transferred it to a glass vial, adding three drops of distilled water. The liquid turned silver-white, like moonlight captured in crystal.

"Drink this before you sleep. All of it."

I held out the vial. As Valtier reached for it, a whisper slithered through the room. Not from him, not from the fire's crackle or the wind against windows.

From behind the exposed mirror.

"Aurea..."

The vial slipped from my fingers. A sharp crack of glass on stone. The silver liquid spread across the floor in patterns that looked like quicksilver script, symbols that meant something, if only I could remember what. It moved in a way that was unnatural.

I couldn't move. The whisper echoed in my bones, familiar as my own heartbeat and foreign as the moon's dark side. Behind the mirror's black glass, that serpentine movement intensified, pressing against the surface as if testing the boundary between worlds.

"Aurea..." The voice came again, not from the mirror this time, but from the spreading liquid itself. The silver began to write, curves and symbols that made my eyes water to follow.

Valtier stared at me, his exhausted face draining of color. "It knows you." His voice cracked. "The voice…it's never said anyone's name before. Only mine."

The firelight dimmed without warning, flames shrinking to blue wisps though the logs remained intact. Frost began creeping across the windows from the corners inward, and my breath emerged in white clouds that shouldn't exist in a room with a fire.

Behind the mirror's surface, the serpentine shadow pressed closer, and for one horrifying moment, I could have sworn I saw its eyes, glittering orbs, staring back.

"What are you?" Valtier whispered, but I couldn't tell if he was asking me or the thing in the glass.

The silver liquid script pulsed once with moonlight brightness, and deep in my mind, a door I'd locked long ago began to rattle on its hinges.