Chapter 7 #2
"I didn't choose to forget." My hands found his chest, not pushing away but not pulling closer either. Suspended between resistance and surrender. "They took it from me. Melora, the binding, the—"
"I know." His forehead touched mine, and suddenly I could feel his memories too, watching me collapse after the failed ritual, seeing them carry me away, calling my name into mirrors that would never again show my face. "I know you didn't choose it. But knowing doesn't make the silence hurt less."
The garden continued deteriorating around us.
Petals fell like snow, each one whispering secrets in languages I almost understood.
The mirrors hanging from nothing began to crack, their surfaces showing not reflections but possibilities, what could have been if the ritual had worked, if I hadn't forgotten, if the world had been kind to children who loved across impossible boundaries.
"The garden's dying."
"No." His arms tightened around me, holding me steady as reality shifted and reformed. "It's changing. It can't exist without you, but it doesn't know what shape to take now that you're here but not here, remembering but not remembering."
"I want to remember." The admission scraped my throat raw. "But I'm terrified of what I'll find."
"You'll find me." His lips brushed my forehead, not quite a kiss, more like a blessing or a curse. "You'll find us. And you'll find the price we both paid for loving across realms that were never meant to touch."
The silver light leaking from the fractured roses began to pool at our feet, rising like reverse rain. Each droplet that touched my skin left a mark, not visible, but present, adding weight to my bones that would follow me into waking.
"Your name." I pulled back enough to see his face, to watch stars wheel through his dark eyes. "Silvyr. But that's not all of it, is it?"
"Names have power here. Speaking them changes things."
"Tell me anyway."
He smiled, and for a moment looked exactly like the boy from my memory, young and eager and unburdened by centuries of solitude.
"Silvyr Ashenheart Nightweaver, Prince of the Forgotten Reach, Guardian of the Last Mirror, Keeper of Abandoned Reflections."
Each title resonated through the garden, making the cracks in reality seal themselves, the leaking light reverse its flow. The garden responded to his true naming by becoming more solid, more real, as if his identity gave it permission to exist.
"And you?" His hand returned to my face, thumb tracing the line of my jaw. "Do you remember your true name?"
I opened my mouth to say I didn't, couldn't, but what came out instead was, "Aurea—"
The word hung incomplete. There was more, I could feel it, pressing against the inside of my teeth like caged birds.
"Aurea Miren—"
Still incomplete. The garden held its breath, waiting.
His lips brushed my ear. "Names spoken in this garden become truth. Be careful what you claim."
But careful had never been my nature, not truly. The silver marks on my arms flared bright as stars, and I felt something deep in my chest unlock, a door I hadn't known was barred swinging wide.
"My name is Aurea Miren—"
The garden began to dissolve. Not cracking this time but fading, becoming transparent like morning mist touched by sun. I could see through it to another place, my room in the apothecary, my body in the bed, silver petals falling from nowhere to cover my sleeping form like snow.
"No." I gripped his arms, trying to anchor myself in the dream. "Not yet. There's so much I need to—"
"This is just the beginning." He was fading too, becoming translucent, though his eyes remained solid black with their cargo of stars. "Every time you sleep, you come closer to remembering. Every dream brings you home."
"To the garden?"
"To me."
The admission should have sounded possessive. Instead it sounded lost, like a prayer from someone who'd forgotten how to hope but couldn't stop trying.
I was being pulled backward, up, through layers of consciousness that felt like swimming through honey made of light. The last solid thing was his hand in mine, his thumb still tracing those endless circles on my palm.
"Your name," he called as I rose toward waking. "Remember your true name."
The garden collapsed into a single point of light, then expanded outward in a flash that tasted of silver and sorrow. I gasped awake in my bed, spine arched, hands clutching at air that had held him seconds before.
Dawn crept through my window, painting everything gray and rose. My breath misted in the cold air, but I barely noticed because covering my bed, my floor, every surface of my small room, were silver petals that shouldn't exist.
They were already beginning to fade, becoming transparent as morning strengthened its hold on the world. But one remained solid where it had fallen on my lips, tasting of frost and memory and a name I almost remembered.
"Miren."
The middle part of my name, yes, but also something more. A meaning I'd lost. A piece of myself that had been carved away and was only now beginning to grow back, tender as new skin over a wound.
I sat up, silver petals cascading from my hair, my clothes, my skin. Each one whispered as it fell, speaking words in that ancient language I'd used in the memory of the failed ritual.
Remember, they said. Remember who you were. Remember what you promised. Remember him.
One petal remained in my palm, refusing to fade with the others. I closed my fingers around it, feeling its edges sharp as truth against my skin.
From downstairs, I heard Melora moving through the shop, preparing for the day. The normal sounds of morning, a kettle whistling, herbs being ground, bottles clinking, but underneath them, something else. A resonance, like the echo of massive bells ringing in the distance.
Every mirror in the shop was singing.
And I knew, with certainty that bypassed thought and lived in my bones, that he was watching through every single one.