Chapter 20
Aurea
The maids arrived at dawn with Prince Aldric's summons, their faces carefully blank as they laid out the elaborate court dress.
Deep violet silk that caught light like liquid shadow, silver thread embroidered in patterns that made my marks tingle beneath my skin.
A masquerade, they informed me with practiced efficiency.
The Prince's way of celebrating the "resolution of recent magical disturbances. "
As if covering our faces would hide what we'd all become.
Melora's fingers worked through my hair, braiding silver strands that hadn't existed yesterday into complex patterns meant to disguise their unnatural shimmer. Her touch was gentle but her hands shook, and I caught her wiping her eyes when she thought I wasn't looking.
"Seventeen times," she said suddenly, her voice barely above a whisper.
My hands stilled on the jewelry box. "What?"
"That's how many times I've had to watch you forget him. Seventeen times over fourteen years." The brush in her hand trembled. "The first time, you remembered for three months. You were eight, and you spent every night crying at mirrors, begging Silvyr to answer you."
The confession hung between us like a blade. I turned on the vanity stool to face her properly, seeing the weight of all those resets carved into the lines around her eyes.
"Three months," I repeated, tasting the loss of it. "I knew him for three whole months and then—"
"Then one morning you woke asking why your hands felt strange in the gloves." Melora's voice cracked. "You looked right through a mirror as if it were ordinary glass. No recognition, no yearning, just... nothing. As if those three months had been surgically removed from your mind."
"And you let it happen."
"I helped make it happen." The admission seemed to age her another decade. "Mixed the herbs myself, spoke the words that would lock those memories away. Held you while you drifted off to sleep still whispering his name, knowing you'd wake with that part of yourself missing."
I wanted to rage at her. Wanted to scream about betrayal and stolen choices. But looking at her now, seeing the guilt that had eaten at her for over a decade, I found only exhaustion.
"The second time?"
"Six weeks. You were nine." Melora resumed braiding, her fingers steadier now that the confession had begun. "You'd learned to hide it better, pretending you didn't see him in every reflection. But I knew. Mothers always know when their children are keeping secrets."
"You're not my mother."
"No," Melora agreed quietly. "But I loved you like one. Still do, despite everything I've done to hurt you in the name of that love."
She pinned a silver rose into the braids, its crystal petals catching the morning light. The same impossible rose that had appeared on my pillow, now repurposed as an ornament. A bridge between worlds worn as decoration.
"The third time was only two weeks," Melora continued, her voice taking on the hollow quality of someone reciting a litany of sins.
"You were ten. I'd gotten better at recognizing the signs, seeing the way you'd pause at puddles, how you'd trace patterns in condensation on windows.
That time, you fought the forgetting. Tried to write yourself notes, hide reminders. I found them all, of course."
"Of course." Bitterness crept into my voice despite my exhaustion.
"The fourth lasted a single day. You were eleven, and you woke from a dream screaming his name with such anguish that I..." She paused, swallowing hard. "I mixed the dose stronger. Made sure the forgetting would take deeper root."
Each confession was another weight on my chest, another stolen piece of myself I'd never get back. "How long was the longest?"
"Five months, when you were thirteen." Melora's reflection in the vanity mirror looked haggard, haunted.
"You were so happy those months. You'd learned to speak with him through dreams, learned to pull moonbloom petals through reflections.
You were becoming who you were meant to be, and you glowed with it. "
"What happened?"
"You tried to pull him through completely.
I found you unconscious in front of the old mirror in the shop's attic, silver blood pooling beneath you, your marks spread all the way to your shoulders.
" Her fingers ghosted over my covered arms. "You nearly died.
The binding between you was too strong, but your body was still too young to channel that much power. "
"So you broke us apart again."
"I saved your life. Again." Melora stepped back, surveying her handiwork.
My hair was an elaborate architecture of braids and pins, silver roses nestled throughout like stars in a night sky.
"Each time got harder. The herbs had to be stronger, the spells more complex.
Your body was building resistance, and your soul was fighting to remember what I kept taking away. "
I stood, the violet dress whispering around me. In the mirror, I looked like what I was—something caught between worlds, mortal and not yet fully other. The mask they'd provided lay on the vanity, silver filigree worked into the shape of butterfly wings.
"The seventeenth time," I said. "How long did that one last?"
"You don't remember because it never fully took." Melora moved to the window, her back to me. "When you went to Lord Valtier's estate. The suppressions had stopped working completely. Your power, your memories, they were all rising to the surface despite everything I did to keep them buried."
"That's why you were so frightened when I came back."
"I knew it was over." She turned to face me, tears tracking down her weathered cheeks. "Knew I'd lost the battle I'd been fighting for years. You were going to remember everything, become everything, and there was nothing I could do to stop it."
"Would you?" I asked. "If you could do it again, would you make the same choices?"
Melora was quiet for a long moment, considering.
"Yes," she said finally. "Because for years, you got to be just Aurea.
Not a Mirror Queen, not a bridge between worlds, not someone's destiny or prophecy or curse.
Just a girl learning herbs, complaining about difficult customers, dreaming normal dreams. That's what I gave you—a childhood, even if it was built on lies. "
"A childhood where I always felt like something was missing."
"Better than no childhood at all." Melora picked up the mask, holding it out to me.
"Your mother never got to just be Lyralei.
From birth, she was the Mirror Queen's heir, then the Mirror Queen herself.
Every moment of her life was duty and power and impossible choices.
I watched it hollow her out until there was nothing left but purpose. "
I took the mask, its weight heavier than silver and crystal should be. "And you thought I deserved better."
"I thought you deserved a choice." Melora's smile was sad but fond. "Even if I had to take a thousand other choices away to give you that one."
"That makes no sense."
"Love rarely does."
A knock at the door interrupted whatever response I might have made. "It's time, my lady," came a servant's voice.
I looked at myself one last time in the cracked mirror. Behind my reflection, I could just make out Silvyr's form, faint but present. He'd been listening to everything, I realized. Hearing the full scope of what had been done to us, for us, in the name of protection.
His eyes met mine through the glass, and I saw my own complicated mix of anger, grief, and reluctant understanding reflected in those star-filled depths.
"The masquerade," I said, fitting the mask over my face. "What's the Prince really planning?"
"I don't know." Melora adjusted the mask's ribbons, her fingers gentle against my hair. "But Aurea, be careful. The court has been dancing around the question of the Mirror Queens for generations. Now that you're here, openly bearing the bloodline, they'll have to make a choice."
"Crown me or kill me."
"Or bind you." Melora's expression darkened. "There are other ways to control power besides death. Marriage, magical contracts, oaths that can't be broken. The Prince is young, unmarried, and pragmatic enough to see the value in a controlled Mirror Queen."
The thought sent ice through my veins. "He wouldn't—"
"He would, if he thought it would stabilize the realm." Melora stepped back. "Your mother refused three different proposals from noble houses, all designed to dilute and control her bloodline. They've only gotten more creative since then."
I thought of Prince Aldric's calculating gaze, the way he'd studied my marks like they were a puzzle to be solved. Would he really try to chain me through marriage? Make me a crown jewel in his collection of controlled powers?
Through the mirror, I saw Silvyr's form tense, his barely visible hands clenching into fists. The thought of me bound to another, even politically, clearly affected him. The ghost of our connection thrummed with his distress.
"I won't let them," I said, not sure if I was reassuring Melora or Silvyr or myself.
"You may not have a choice." Melora straightened my shoulders, a final maternal gesture. "The game the court plays has rules older than the prohibition. Once you enter that ballroom, you're a piece on their board."
"Then I'll change the game."
"Spoken like your mother's daughter." Melora's smile was proud and terrified in equal measure. "She said the same thing, right before she decided to seal the Crimson One. We both know how that ended."
The reminder sobered me. My mother had been powerful, clever, beloved by many. She'd still died to protect a realm that feared her kind.
Another knock, more insistent. "My lady, the Prince insists—"
"I'm coming." I took one last look around the room that had been my prison and sanctuary. The cracked mirror, the bed where I'd dreamed of gardens made of glass, the window where I'd watched snow fall while my memories returned piece by piece.
"Aurea." Melora caught my arm as I reached the door. "Whatever happens tonight, whatever they try to make you do… remember that you're not alone. You have allies you don't even know about yet."
"Cryptic to the end."
"It's kept me alive this long." She squeezed my arm gently. "Also remember—at a masquerade, everyone wears more than one face. The mask they show and the truth beneath. Don't trust either completely."
I nodded, adjusting the butterfly mask one final time. The silver filigree caught the light, sending small rainbows across the walls. Beautiful and delicate, but I could feel the magic worked into its frame. Observation spells, probably. Maybe compulsions.
The court wanted to watch me dance.
Time to show them what a Mirror Queen's daughter could do with an audience.