Chapter 6
Aurea
The walk back to the apothecary stretched through empty streets, each step echoing against shuttered windows.
Snow fell in thick curtains, erasing footprints as soon as I made them.
The silver markings on my arm pulsed beneath my sleeve, a heartbeat of light that had nothing to do with my actual pulse.
The name still burned on my tongue. Silvyr. Speaking it had changed something fundamental, like breaking a seal on a door I hadn't known existed.
The apothecary's crooked chimney appeared through the snow. No smoke rose from it. The hearth would be dead by now, the protective wards grown cold. I pushed through the garden gate, its squeal muffled by the blanket of white covering everything.
The front door stood open.
I froze. I never left it unlatched. Neither would Melora.
Light spilled from within—not the warm glow of candles but something sharper, more ethereal. The light of another world.
I pushed the door wider.
Every mirror in the shop stood uncovered.
The old standing mirror from the back room. The small hand glass Melora used for checking tincture clarity. Even the polished copper pans hanging from their hooks, anything that could hold a reflection had been stripped of its protective cloth.
And none of them showed the apothecary.
The standing mirror reflected a garden of crystal roses. The hand glass showed a corridor lined with portraits I'd never seen. The copper pans held fragments of starlight, of serpent scales, of a boy's brown eyes shifting to black.
I moved through the chaos, my marked hand tingling with each reflection I passed. As I passed, the mirrors stirred, their surfaces rippling like disturbed water. In one, I glimpsed myself as a child, laughing. In another, older, weeping. In a third—
"No."
Melora's voice cracked through the shop. She stood in the doorway to the back room, still in her nightgown with a heavy cloak thrown over it. The warmth fled Melora's face, leaving it the bloodless, fragile color of a pressed flower, her eyes stark and dark within the sudden pallor.
"Step away from them, Aurea. Now."
"They uncovered themselves." I turned slowly, taking in Melora's wild eyes, the way my mentor's hands shook as she grabbed for the nearest cloth. "I didn't—"
"It doesn't matter." Melora rushed to the standing mirror, fighting to throw a sheet over it. The fabric wouldn't stay. It slid off like water, pooling at the mirror's base. "Help me. We need to cover them before—"
"Before what?" I caught Melora's wrist as she reached for another cloth. "Before I see what they're showing me?"
Melora's gaze dropped to where I held her. To the silver markings visible through the torn sleeve, spiraling up from palm to elbow in patterns that looked almost like writing.
The cloth slipped from Melora's fingers.
"Oh, child." The words came out broken. "What have you done?"
"What have I—" I released her, stepping back. "What have I done? You're the one who's been lying to me. All of you."
"To protect you."
"From what? From who I am?" I thrust my marked arm forward. "Look at this. Really look. This isn't something new, it's something that was always there, waiting."
Melora's shoulders sagged. She moved to the workshop table, sinking onto the bench as if the strength had been siphoned from her limbs. For a long moment, she simply stared at the swirling patterns on my skin.
"I mixed silver dust into the leather of your gloves." Her voice came out hollow. "Moonshade root. Forget-me-vine. Seventeen other herbs that suppress magical resonance. Changed the mixture every season to keep it strong."
Eirian's betrayal had been a cold knife. This was a fire, starting in my gut and consuming everything, leaving ash where trust used to be. This was Melora. The woman who'd raised me, taught me, held me through nightmares I couldn't remember having.
"How long?"
"Since the day I found you." Melora's fingers traced patterns on the wooden table. "Fourteen years ago. You were seven, though you couldn't tell me that yourself. Couldn't tell me anything."
"Where?"
"The Temple of Forgotten Stars. Middle of winter, worse than this one. You were half-frozen, clothes torn to ribbons, clutching something in your hand so tight I had to pry your fingers open to get it free."
Melora stood, moving to a cabinet I'd never seen her open. She pulled out a small lead box, its surface etched with binding runes. The weight of it seemed to surprise her, or maybe that was just age showing in how her arms trembled.
She set it on the table between us.
"I should have destroyed it. But something stopped me. Maybe I knew you'd need it one day. Maybe I'm just a sentimental fool."
The box's lid lifted with a sound like breaking ice. Inside, nested in black velvet, lay a shard of mirror no bigger than my palm. Its surface showed no reflection of the room.
It showed a garden made of glass.
Not a memory of a garden. Not an image. The garden itself existed within that fragment, roses blooming in eternal frost, pathways that led between worlds. And there, barely visible in the distance, two figures walked hand in hand.
"You held this so tight it cut through your palms." Melora's voice barely rose above whisper. "The wounds wouldn't heal properly for weeks. They kept weeping silver."
I reached for the shard. The moment my fingers made contact, warmth flooded through me—recognition so profound it brought tears to my eyes. This wasn't just a piece of mirror. It was a piece of our mirror. The one Silvyr and I had made together, before—
Before what?
"Tell me about the Sundering."
Melora flinched. "You've heard that term?"
"I heard it was what happened when the Mirror Realm was sealed. But that's not the whole truth, is it?"
"No." Melora pulled her cloak tighter, though the shop wasn't cold. "The Sundering wasn't just sealing the Mirror Realm. It was severing it. Cutting the connections between worlds so completely that anyone caught between them would be torn apart."
"The Mirror Queens were guardians of those connections." The line I’d been reading when I was so rudely interrupted floated to the top of my mind.
"Were." Melora's laugh held no humor. "Your grandmother was the last official Queen. She died trying to stop the Sundering. Your mother... she tried a different way. Tried to preserve the connections through her children. Through you."
"Children. Plural."
"You had a brother. Vaen. He was older, already showing signs of the gift when the Prohibition Forces came."
The name stirred nothing. No memory, no recognition. Just emptiness where family should exist.
"They killed him?"
"The records say he died in the Sundering." Melora's fingers worried at the edge of her cloak. "But records lie, especially about that night. All I know is you appeared at the temple, alone, calling for someone who wasn't there."
"Silvyr." The name escaped before I could stop it.
Melora went rigid. "You remember?"
"No. Yes. I—" I pressed my palms to my temples, fighting the pressure building behind my eyes. "He was in the mirror at Eirian's estate. A serpent, massive, made of starlight and shadows. But I knew him. My body knew him even if my mind didn't."
"The texts speak of bonded entities. Beings from the Mirror Realm who form connections with Mirrorwalkers." Melora's words came carefully, like she was picking her way through thorns. "The bonds are supposed to be sacred. Protective. But after the Sundering—"
"They became curses."
"The realm twisted everything it touched. Connections that should have been beautiful became chains. The bonded entities were trapped, transformed into monsters." She gestured at my marked arm. "And the Mirrorwalkers who survived were marked as outcasts. Dangers to be eliminated."
"So you decided to eliminate me a different way." The accusation tasted bitter. "Suppress my magic, hide my nature, make me forget everything that mattered."
"You were dying!" The words exploded from Melora, raw and desperate. "When I found you, you were burning from the inside out. Your magic was consuming you, trying to reach something that wasn't there anymore. The only way to save you was to sever the connection."
"By making me forget."
"Memory and magic are linked in your bloodline. Break one, you damage the other." Tears tracked down Melora's weathered cheeks. "I had to choose between letting you die as yourself or live as someone else. I chose life. I chose you, even if it meant you'd never truly be you again."
The shop fell silent except for the whisper of snow against windows. In the uncovered mirrors, scenes flickered, the garden, the serpent, moments that felt like memories but couldn't be.
"The nightmares I have. The ones where I'm falling through glass—"
"Not nightmares. Memories trying to surface." Melora wiped her face with her sleeve. "The mind doesn't like being caged. It fights back in dreams."
"And you just kept drugging me. Kept pushing it all down."
"What else could I do? Let you remember?
Let you reach for power that would kill you?
" She stood, pacing to the window. "You were alone and a child, Aurea, and calling for someone named Silvyr like your heart was being torn from your chest. You screamed his name until your throat bled.
The only peace you found was when I finally made you forget. "
I looked down at the mirror shard still in my hand. The garden had changed, the two figures were closer now, and I could almost make out their faces. Almost.
"The silver markings won't stop spreading, will they?"
"No. Now that the connection's been reestablished, your magic will keep surfacing. The gloves can't suppress it anymore." Melora turned from the window. "You're becoming what you were always meant to be. And I can't protect you from it."
"Maybe I don't need protection. Maybe I need truth."
"Truth?" A dry, hollow sound escaped Melora's lips, devoid of all humor.
"The truth is that every Mirror Queen before you ended the same way, consumed by the very power they wielded.
The truth is that your bonded entity, this Silvyr, is as much curse as companion now.
The truth is that the Crown will execute you the moment they confirm what you are. "
"Then why save me at all?"
The question hung between us, sharp as the mirror shard's edge.
"Because you were a child who needed help. Because I'd lost my own daughter to the Prohibition Forces, and I couldn't watch another child die." Melora's voice broke completely. "Because even knowing what you were, what danger you represented, you were still just a little girl crying in the snow."
The rage that had held my spine rigid sputtered out, leaving me hollow. The image of Melora as a villain fractured. In its place stood a woman hunched against a storm I had never known was raging, her face etched with the cost of a fourteen-year-long lie.
"I'm not that little girl anymore."
"No." Melora approached slowly, like I might bolt. "You're not. You're something I don't fully understand. Something that terrifies me and fills me with pride in equal measure."
She reached out, hesitating just before touching my marked arm.
"May I?"
I nodded.
Melora's fingers traced the silver patterns, following their spiral from wrist to elbow. Where she touched, the markings flared brighter, responding to examination.
"They're beautiful." Wonder crept into her voice. "I've seen illustrations in the old texts, but this... they look alive."
"They feel alive. Like something singing under my skin."
"Your mother's marks were similar. She could make flowers bloom in winter, call light from empty air." Melora's touch lingered on a particular spiral near my elbow. "She tried to teach me once. Said magic wasn't about forcing change but about remembering what was already possible."
"What happened to her?"
"The same thing that happens to everyone who defies the Crown's laws." Melora withdrew her hand. "She died believing her children would carry on her work. That Vaen and I would restore the connections she couldn't save."
"Instead, Vaen died and I forgot everything."
"Perhaps that was mercy."
I wanted to argue, but exhaustion crashed over me like a tide. The night's revelations pressed down, Eirian's betrayal, the serpent's transformation, Silvyr's name on my lips, and now this. The truth I'd sought was heavier than the lies had been.
"I need to rest."
"Of course." Melora moved toward the stairs, then paused. "The mirrors will stay uncovered now. Your magic won't let them be hidden. But Aurea, be careful what you look for in them. Sometimes we're better off not knowing what we've lost."
"And sometimes we can't move forward until we understand what's behind us."
Melora nodded, sadness etching deeper lines around her eyes. "I'll... I'll be here if you need me."
The silence in the room was different now. It wasn't the comfortable quiet of before, but the vast, empty space between two strangers. The apothecary was still home, but the feeling of it was gone, shattered into pieces too sharp to put back together.
I climbed the narrow stairs, each step an effort. My room was unchanged, a narrow bed, worn quilts, herbs hanging from the rafters. But I was noticeably different. The silver markings caught moonlight from the window, casting patterns on the walls that looked almost like writing.
I collapsed onto the bed without undressing. The mirror shard was still in my hand, its weight both comfort and torment. Through its surface, the garden continued its eternal bloom, waiting for something. Waiting for me.
Sleep took me between one breath and the next.
The dream began immediately.
Not the falling nightmare I knew so well, but something else. I stood in a place that wasn't quite the garden and wasn't quite the real world. The edges of everything blurred, reality soft as candlewax.
He emerged from that softness like smoke taking form.
Not the serpent. Not the boy from my recovered memory.
A young man, perhaps twenty, with hair that caught light like spun silver. His clothes were simple, dark fabric that seemed to drink in light, but he wore them with unconscious grace. When he turned to face me fully, I gasped.
His eyes were black. Not dark brown or deep blue that looked black in certain light. True black, edge to edge, with stars scattered through them like someone had captured the night sky in his gaze.
"Aurea."
My name in his mouth was prayer and pain combined.
"Silvyr."
He smiled, and for a moment, the stars in his eyes brightened. And then I fell.