Chapter 14
Aurea
Of course the Crown had declined to see me as soon as I had arrived and instead I’d been shuttled off to a waiting room of sorts. One with a bed. One that felt more like a prison cell.
It didn’t help that the palace bed was too soft.
Every shift made me sink deeper into feathers and silk, the luxury suffocating after years of thin mattresses and rough wool.
I'd kicked off the coverlet an hour ago.
Now I lay rigid in the palace-provided nightgown, shadow-silk gloves tight against my burning marks.
Footsteps echoed in the corridor. Regular. Measured. The third patrol since midnight.
I counted the guard's paces. Twenty-seven from the far stairwell to my door. A pause, checking the seal they'd placed there, no doubt. Then twenty-seven more to the opposite stairwell. The pattern hadn't varied in three hours.
The marks pulsed harder. Silver lines of heat crawled up my arms despite the gloves' suppression. Something in the palace called to me, a resonance that made my teeth ache and my vision blur at the edges. Not Silvyr's presence. Something older. Heavier. Like recognition stirring in my bones.
Twenty-seven steps had passed. I held my breath as the guard paused at the door.
Twenty-seven steps away.
I waited another full rotation to be certain, then slipped from the bed.
My bare feet met stone cold enough to steal feeling, but shoes would echo.
The nightgown whispered against my legs as I moved to the door.
No locks on this side, guests didn't need them, after all.
Just the wax seal outside that would break if the door opened.
Unless the door never fully closed in the first place.
I'd wedged a sliver of paper in the jamb hours ago, invisible in the shadows but enough to prevent the latch from catching. The door opened on silent hinges. The corridor stretched empty in both directions, lit by oil lamps that threw more shadow than light.
The seal remained intact on the outside, an illusion of compliance.
Left led to the main thoroughfare. Right disappeared into older architecture, where the palace's polished facade gave way to raw stone and ancient ambition.
The air to the right grew thin, vibrating with a low hum that resonated in my teeth.
It was a dissonant chord in the palace's silence, and my marks burned in answer, urging me toward it.
The corridor narrowed. Tapestries covered the walls here, their patterns indistinct in the dimness. No windows. No doors for fifty paces. Then an archway, wider than the rest, with symbols carved into the lintel that hurt to look at directly.
Through the arch, the space opened into something vast.
A name surfaced in my mind, unbidden, a whisper of memory that tasted of dust and old magic, The Hall of Covered Mirrors.
The ceiling vaulted up into darkness, supported by pillars that might have been marble or bone.
Draped frames lined the walls, dozens of them, hundreds maybe, their coverings stirring in air that shouldn't exist. No windows here.
No wind. Yet the black cloth rippled like water disturbed by something beneath.
Between the mirrors hung portraits.
The first one stopped me mid-step. A woman in royal regalia, crown bright against dark hair, but her eyes were as silver as moonlight, as silver as the marks beneath my gloves. The brass plate read, Queen Morwyn, Third of Her Line.
The next portrait was another queen, different features but the same eyes. Queen Selara, Fourth of Her Line.
And the next. And the next.
All queens. All Mirror Queens. All with eyes that belonged in my own skull.
My ancestors stretched along the wall, a legacy painted in silver and shadow. Some young, barely older than I was now. Others aged into sharp dignity. All watching me with those familiar eyes, as if they'd been waiting.
The pull intensified, drawing me deeper into the hall. My feet moved without conscious thought, past covered mirrors that whispered my name in voices like breaking glass, past portraits of women who shared my blood and my burden.
There. At the hall's heart.
The largest portrait dominated the far wall. A woman in her prime, beauty sharpened by intelligence and tempered by loss. Dark hair crowned with silver, not age but birthright. The same sharp cheekbones I saw in my own reflection. The same stubborn set to the jaw.
Queen Lyralei, Last of Her Line.
My mother.
My knees buckled. I caught myself against the wall, palm flat against stone that thrummed with old magic. My mother's painted eyes bore into me, silver and knowing and desperately sad.
My hand rose to my own face, tracing the bones beneath my skin. "This is from you," I whispered to the painted eyes. "All of it." The last word was an accusation.
Movement in my peripheral vision. Another portrait hung beside my mother's, smaller, as if added as an afterthought.
A young man, perhaps eighteen, with features that echoed Lyralei's but softened by youth.
His hair caught the light strangely in the painting, not quite brown, not quite silver. Like mine before the marks awakened.
No nameplate. No inscription. But the defiant tilt of his chin, the way his hair seemed to drink the light, it was a face I'd seen in my own reflection before the silver came. A ghost of my own features.
"Vaen."
My brother. My brother who died in the Sundering. Except the painting was too recent. The style, the frame, the very paint itself, all crafted after the Sundering. After his supposed death.
If Vaen died in the Sundering, why did his portrait hang here, painted years after that event?
The covered mirrors pulsed. All of them, all at once, as if something behind the cloth had suddenly awakened. The temperature plummeted. My breath misted in the air.
A tear appeared in the nearest mirror's covering. Not a cut, a burn, as if something on the other side pressed too hot against the fabric. Black smoke leaked through the gap, pooling on the floor like oil.
The smoke rose. Took shape. Semi-solid tendrils reached toward me, dripping shadow.
Not smoke. A wraith.
I stumbled backward. More tears appeared in other coverings. More smoke. More shapes emerging with predatory intent. They moved wrong, too fluid, too hungry, without the hesitation of living things.
The first one lunged.
I threw myself sideways. Its tendrils raked across my shoulder, cold beyond winter, beyond death. The nightgown tore. Blood spattered the floor—
My blood wasn't red. It was molten silver, glowing with its own power. It spattered the stone and hissed, eating into the floor like acid.
The wraith recoiled with a sound like steam escaping. The light burned it, ate through its smoky form like acid through paper.
Three more wraiths circled me. I pressed my back to the wall, heart hammering against my ribs. No weapons. No escape route. Just me and creatures made of shadow and hunger.
A single, desperate word tore from my throat, raw and resonant. "Reveal!" It wasn't a plea; it was a command, and the hall shuddered in response.
Every covered mirror responded, not with obedience but with violence. The wraiths shrieked, a sound that existed more in my bones than my ears. They rushed me all at once.
I slashed my palm against the stone wall. Silver blood flowed freely now, painting light across my skin. I flung my hand out, droplets arcing through the air. Where they struck shadow, shadow burned.
But more kept coming. Dozens now, pouring from every covered surface. They grabbed at my arms, my legs, trying to drag me toward the largest mirror. Its covering had burned away entirely, revealing a surface that reflected nothing but darkness and reaching hands.
Cold fingers wrapped around my throat. My vision sparked. I clawed at the wraith, my bloodied hands passing through smoke that somehow had enough substance to strangle.
The mirror behind the wraith exploded outward.
Not shattered, but opened.
Silvyr erupted from the glass. Not like a reflection stepping out, but like the mirror itself had birthed him, all sharp angles, silver fire, and furious purpose.
Solid.
Real.
More real than I'd ever seen him.
His hand closed around the wraith's throat, or where its throat should be, and silver fire erupted from his grip. The creature dissolved into nothing.
He spun, placing himself between me and the advancing shadows. No longer flickering between forms, he was wholly here, wholly present, though I could see the effort in the rigid line of his shoulders.
"Behind me." His voice carried a commanding tone I'd never heard before.
"I can fight—"
"I know." He caught a wraith mid-lunge, silver flames dancing along his arms. "Fight with me, not alone."
I pressed against his back, feeling solid muscle and heat that shouldn't exist. We moved as one unit, rotating to face each new threat. My silver blood, his silver fire. Light and heat against shadow and cold.
A wraith slipped past his guard. I caught it, actually caught it, my bloodied hands finding purchase on its smoky form. The silver in my blood made it solid enough to grab, solid enough to tear. I ripped it in half, the pieces dissolving before they hit the floor.
"The reflections," Silvyr gasped, shoving a wraith back with a burst of silver fire. "Their own reflections, they hate them! Turn one! Make it look at another!"
I understood instantly. Mirrors reflecting mirrors, infinite recursion, infinite trap. I broke from his back, diving toward the nearest covered frame. My bloody hands gripped the heavy glass, muscles straining as I wrenched it around.
A wraith lunged for my exposed back. Silvyr's hand closed on my shoulder, yanking me aside as his other hand painted silver fire through the air. The wraith hit the flame barrier and shrieked into nothing.