Chapter 18
Aurea
The silver rose on my pillow pulsed like a severed star.
My eyes snapped open to the dark of my guest chambers, the ache of Vaen's betrayal a physical weight in my chest. The flower hadn't been there. I'd collapsed into bed, the Garden's truths chasing me into a restless sleep, and the pillow had been empty.
I sat up, the movement stiff. The rose's light was soft, warm, not the harsh burn of silverfire. Its petals were perfect crystal, but the stem bent under my fingers, the thorns sharp enough to prick my thumb. A bead of blood welled, gleaming silver in the strange light.
Impossible. Roses didn't grow in Virelda's winter. Silver roses didn't grow anywhere.
"You're awake."
Silvyr's voice came from the mirror across the room.
I turned to find him there, more solid than I'd ever seen him in glass.
The usual blur at his edges had sharpened.
I could count individual strands of his silver hair, see the rise and fall of his chest as if he breathed.
He was beyond handsome, he was beautiful, like a carving done by one of the great masters.
"The rose." My voice cracked from sleep and emotion. "How—"
"Look at it. Really look."
I held the flower up to the pale light seeping through the window. The petals caught the illumination strangely, seeming to exist at two depths simultaneously. When I shifted my angle, I could see through them to another place, a garden where the same rose grew from silver soil.
"It's in both worlds." Wonder and dread tangled in my chest. "At the same time."
"The barriers are weakening." Silvyr's voice was closer, more real. He wasn't a reflection anymore; he was a presence filling the glass. "That promise you remembered, it wasn't just a memory. It was a key. Now the realms are bleeding through."
The rose in my grip grew warmer, a phantom pulse that echoed the beat of my own heart. A current traveled up my arm, making the silver marks under my nightgown tingle and burn. I could feel him.
"Show me."
His gaze held mine, the starlight in his eyes swirling with concern. "It's dangerous, Aurea. Pulling things across…"
"So is having my life decided for me." The words were acid on my tongue. My hands clenched, the rose's thorns digging into my palm. "Vaen already made his choice for me. This one is mine."
Silvyr's expression softened. He pressed his palm to his side of the mirror. "Watch."
Light gathered at his fingertips. Not the harsh silver of my fire, but something more complex. Threads of starlight and shadow woven together. He reached toward something I couldn't see, his face tightening with concentration.
A moonbloom petal materialized in the air before him. It drifted down like snow, passing through the mirror's surface as if the glass were merely air.
The petal landed on my bed, as real as the rose in my hand.
But the effort cost him. Scales rippled across his jaw, his form wavering toward serpent before solidifying again. His breathing came harder.
"The more solid the object, the more it takes." His hand remained on the glass. "The rose was easier because you anchor it on this side. Your marks? Your blood? They're bridges."
I stood, moving toward the mirror. My reflection had changed. The silver marks showed through my nightgown now, glowing faintly, and my edges seemed less defined. As if I were becoming transparent.
"What's happening to me?"
"The same thing that's happening to me. We're equalizing. I become more real in your world, you become less solid in it." He leaned his forehead against the glass. "I should stop this. Send you away before—"
"No." I pressed my palm over his, the mirror between us. "I've had enough of people deciding what's best for me. Stealing my choices in the name of protection."
Heat built where our hands aligned. Not the burning of silver fire, but something else. Connection. Recognition. The mirror rippled like water.
"Try something." His voice dropped lower, rougher. "Push your magic through. Not at the glass, but through our connection."
I closed my eyes, feeling for that thread of warmth between us. My silver fire responded eagerly, racing down my arm toward our joined hands. But instead of burning, it merged with his power at the mirror's surface.
Light exploded between us. Not silver or shadow, but both, twisted together like rope. The mirror sang, a crystalline note that made my bones ache.
"Open your eyes."
I did. The glass between our hands had thinned to gossamer. I could see every line in his palm, feel the coolness of his skin. Almost touching. Almost—
"Well, isn't this sickeningly romantic."
We jerked apart. Syra materialized in every reflective surface simultaneously, the windows, the silver tea service, even the water pitcher. Her usual smirk was present on the water pitcher, but in the main vanity mirror, her expression was tight, her mismatched eyes holding no humor at all.
"Two souls reaching across impossible distance. Very poetic." She coalesced more fully in the vanity mirror. "Also very stupid."
"Syra—" Silvyr began.
"No, no, let me guess the next part." The mirrorborn spirit's form shifted, showing different versions of herself. "You'll find a way to be together. Love conquers all. The realms will surely understand and make an exception just for you."
"You're scared." I studied the spirit's flickering form. "Why?"
Syra's multiplicity collapsed into a single reflection of a young woman with silver and gray halves, her expression ancient and sad.
"Because I've seen this before. Nine times, actually. A Mirror Queen and her chosen. A love that transcends dimensions." Her voice lost its usual melodic quality. "Want to know how many survived it?"
The silence stretched.
"Zero. Zero survived. The lucky ones only destroyed themselves. The unlucky ones took half a kingdom with them."
"We're different—" Silvyr started.
"That's what they all said." Syra flickered between surfaces, agitated. "Two souls, one reflection. Pretty story. Tragic ending. The realms don't like being bridged. Reality has rules."
"Rules change." I touched my spreading marks. "I'm proof of that."
"You're proof of nothing except mortal stubbornness." But Syra's tone held affection beneath the warning. "Fine. Ignore the wisdom of ages. But when you start coming apart at the seams, and I mean that literally, remember I tried."
The spirit began to fade.
"Wait." I stepped toward the vanity. "If it's so impossible, why help us?"
Syra solidified slightly, her mismatched features almost smiling.
"Because the tenth time might be different.
Or because I'm a romantic fool. Or because watching you two pine through glass for another century would bore me to tears.
" She shrugged, the gesture rippling through every reflection. "Take your pick."
She vanished, leaving only ordinary reflections behind.
Silvyr remained in the main mirror, his expression thoughtful. "She's not wrong about the danger."
"I know." I returned to stand before him. "I don't care."
"You should care. If we destabilize reality—"
"Reality stole my memories. My brother. My mother. My entire identity was sacrificed to preserve reality's precious rules." My silver fire flared, making the mirror's surface ripple. "Maybe it's time those rules changed."
"Aurea..."
"Touch me."
The words hung between us. Silvyr's eyes widened, the stars in them spinning faster.
"Not through objects. Not through magic. Just... touch me."
"That's not possible."
"Yesterday, a rose existing in two worlds wasn't possible." I pressed both palms to the glass. "Please."
He mirrored my position. Where our hands aligned, the mirror grew warm. Then hot. Then it stopped being a temperature at all and became a vibration that hummed straight through my bones.
"Push with me." His voice strained. "But if it becomes too much—"
"It won't."
We pushed. Not with physical force but with will, with magic, with the desperate need to close the distance between us. The mirror's surface began to give, becoming viscous, elastic.
My fingers sank into the glass as if it were thick, resistant water. The sensation was a paradox—an icy burn that shot up my arm, setting my marks ablaze in silver vines that crawled toward my shoulders.
His fingers met mine in the impossible space between worlds.
Skin to skin.
The contact wasn't just a touch. It was an avalanche. His loneliness, a chasm of centuries. His love, a patient, desperate fire. It flooded me, and I felt my own essence being pulled in return, silver threads of my soul unraveling toward him. Reality groaned, protesting the connection.
"Let go." His voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "Aurea, you have to—"
"No." I gripped tighter. "I won't lose you too."
The mirror cracked. Spider web fractures spread from our joined hands. Through the breaks, I glimpsed other places, the Garden, a throne room of silver, a serpent coiled around a dying world.
"Please." He was begging now. "I can't lose you. Not again."
The please broke through my stubbornness. I released him, stumbling backward. He fell away from the glass, his form shuddering between human and serpent.
The mirror gave a final, decisive crack straight down its center.
Footsteps pounded in the corridor outside. Guards, drawn by the magical disturbance.
"Go." I pressed a hand to the broken glass. "Before they see you."
He faded just as the door burst open. Three guards entered, swords drawn, searching for threats.
"Lady Aurea?" The captain's eyes went to the cracked mirror, then to my translucent edges. "Are you... what happened?"
Before I could answer, another figure pushed through the guards. Melora stood in the doorway, travel-stained and exhausted, her herb satchel clutched against her chest.
"Gran?" I hadn't called her that in years.
Melora's usual calm was shattered. Her face was pale, her knuckles white where she clutched her herb satchel, and her eyes, usually so steady, darted from me to the cracked mirror.
"The mirrors are waking up. All of them," she said, her voice tight with fear. "Whatever you're doing, the realm itself is responding. And I can't... I can't keep taking it from you. The herbs aren't working anymore."
"Taking what from me?"
Melora's face crumpled. "Your memories. Every few months, sometimes every few weeks. You'd remember him, remember who you are, and I'd have to... I'd have to make you forget again. For your own safety. But each time it got harder to make the forgetting stick."
The words hit like physical blows. "How many times?"
"Seventeen complete resets over fourteen years. Sometimes you'd remember for days. Sometimes hours. Once..." Her voice broke. "Once you only remembered long enough to write yourself a single note: 'His name is Silvyr and you love him.'"
The room spun as Melora's confession settled in, every reset like a piece of my life plucked and hidden away. Seventeen times I'd been forced to forget Silvyr, forced to lose a part of myself essential to my existence.
And now—
"Seventeen? You erased me seventeen times, Gran?"
Her face was worn, filled with a distress that burrowed into my own heart and echoed the agony I felt. "Aurea, you were a child! If you'd completed the binding while so young, it would've consumed you both. I couldn't watch you—"
"I made choices, even as a child," I interrupted. "I promised... to him. To myself."
Melora stepped closer, pleading in her gaze. "Choices made without understanding the consequences aren't true choices. And I did it to keep you alive!"
"Alive? This isn't living!" My voice rose, desperation tainting it with bitterness. "I'm a ghost, haunted by a past you kept buried."
The guards hovered at the edges of the confrontation, unsure if they should intervene. Their swords shifted uneasily, but Melora commanded the room with her presence, her grief. "What choice did I have after the Sundering? After losing—"
"Vaen," I interjected softly, the name tender and raw on my tongue. "You lost a daughter, I lost a brother. But Vaen chose his path. How many more of those choices will you take from me?"
Melora bowed her head, her silence carrying more weight than words ever could. I bit back the tsunami of emotions threatening to escape and instead leaned into the anger, the betrayal. But her age, her weariness enveloped me in an unavoidable tide.
"There’s no undoing the past, Gran," I said, gentler now.
"What do you intend?" she asked warily, weary of what choices I might unleash from my stores of withheld clarity.
"To find him," I said simply, eyes alight with purpose. "And this time, Gran, I decide what comes next."