To access the Glimmer proper, one did not merely walk out the front door of the Archive. One had to descend.
Silas led Elara down a spiral staircase carved entirely from obsidian that seemed to bore directly into the center of the earth. The air grew damp, thick with the smell of river mud and roasting spices.
"Stay close," Silas warned as they reached a pair of towering, iron-wrought gates. The metal was twisted into shapes of snarling gargoyles and weeping willows. "The market is neutral ground, but 'neutral' in the Glimmer merely means they won't kill you unless there's a profit in it."
He tapped his staff against the gate. The iron gargoyles slowly turned their stone heads, their blank eyes inspecting them, before the gates groaned open on unseen hinges.
Elara stepped through and gasped.
It was as if someone had taken the historic Royal Mile of Edinburgh, twisted it like a wet rag, and shoved it underground. Crooked, multi-story buildings leaned precariously against one another, their roofs vanishing into an eternal, cavernous twilight above. The streets were paved with uneven cobblestones that seemed to shift slightly underfoot.
But it was the inhabitants that made Elara's heart race.
Lanterns glowing with unnatural greens and purples illuminated a chaotic throng of creatures. There were women with skin the color of twilight and hair like spun silver, haggling over baskets of glowing fungi. Men in sharp, tailored suits walked with heavy, cloven hooves that clicked against the stones. A group of small, hunched figures in ragged cloaks were roasting something over an open flame that smelled suspiciously like burnt sugar and old leather.
"Don't stare," Silas murmured, walking close to her left side, his staff rhythmically tapping the ground. He was parting the crowd simply by existing; the creatures of the Glimmer took one look at his grim face and the Warden's coat, and scrambled out of his path.
"What are they?" Elara whispered, pulling her cloak tighter around herself.
"Faerie cast-offs, goblins, rogue elementals, and humans who found their way down here and forgot the way back," Silas replied, his eyes scanning the rooftops and alleyways. "The Glimmer is a sanctuary for the forgotten. And a playground for the wicked."
They navigated through the winding streets, the cacophony of the market washing over them. Merchants shouted their wares in a dozen languages—some lyrical, some guttural and harsh.
"Dreams for sale! A night of sweet oblivion for three silver coins!" cried a woman with eyes entirely black.
"Bottled luck! Siphoned from a newlywed! Only slightly cursed!" yelled a goblin with a face like a squashed plum.
Elara felt entirely overwhelmed, a fish violently thrown out of its bowl into a raging ocean. She bumped into a stall covered in velvet, nearly knocking over a display of intricately carved bone combs.
"Watch it, Weaver," a raspy voice hissed from the shadows of the stall. A creature that looked entirely made of old rags and spiderwebs leaned over the counter. "You carry a sweet scent. Tastes like raw magic. I'll give you a mirror that shows your true death for a lock of that brown hair."
Elara stumbled back, but a hand—gloved in thick, black leather—slammed down onto the counter.
Silas loomed over the merchant, his grey eyes glacial. "Speak to her again, Snitch, and I will freeze the water in your veins until you shatter."
The creature recoiled, hissing, and melted back into the shadows of the stall.
"I told you to stay close," Silas said, turning to Elara. The anger in his voice was a thin veneer over something else—fear. "You are glowing like a beacon to them. An untrained Weaver is a prize. They would bleed you for the magic in your veins."
"I didn't mean to—"
"Just... stay by my side," he interrupted, his tone softening a fraction. He looked at his gloved hand, the one he had slammed on the counter, as if contemplating offering it to her, before shoving it deeply into his pocket.
They arrived at a dead-end alley that smelled strongly of ozone and fermented apples. At the end of the alley was a door made of solid brass, without a handle or a keyhole.
"Madame Vespera," Silas said to the door.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the brass liquefied, rippling outward like water, before solidifying back into an open archway.
Inside was a parlor that looked like it had been decorated by a Victorian hoarder with a penchant for the occult. Velvet drapes, taxidermy ravens, crystal balls, and towering stacks of precarious ledgers filled every available inch of space.
Sitting behind a massive mahogany desk was a woman who was breathtakingly beautiful, but entirely terrifying. She possessed the elegance of a hunting cat. Her hair was pinned back in sharp rolls, and her eyes were a piercing, iridescent violet.
"Silas Vane," she purred, her voice like velvet sliding over broken glass. She didn't look up from painting her fingernails a deep, bloody red. "I heard you were venturing out of your dusty tomb. To what do I owe the displeasure?"
"I need Silver-Thread, Vespera," Silas said, stepping into the room. "Pure, uncorrupted. A Weaver's length."
Vespera finally looked up. Her violet eyes bypassed Silas completely and locked onto Elara. A slow, predatory smile spread across her face.
"Well, well. A Glass-Weaver. I thought your kind had all gone extinct. Tripped and fell on your own needles, or some such tragedy." She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hands. "You want pure Silver-Thread? The kind stolen from the high fae courts? That is very expensive, Warden."
"Name your price," Silas said flatly.
Vespera's smile widened. "I don't want your gold, Silas. I want a memory. A specific one. Stored in your Archive. Aisle twelve, shelf four, vial number seventy-two."
Silas's posture went rigidly stiff. The temperature in the room plummeted.
"No," he said, his voice deadly quiet. "You know the rules of the Archive. The memories are not for sale. Not ever."
"Then I suppose," Vespera sighed dramatically, inspecting her freshly painted nails, "you and your little Weaver will just have to watch the Great Glass shatter. What a pity for Edinburgh."
Elara looked between the two of them. The tension was suffocating. She remembered the sheer terror of the Shade-Scribe trying to break through the mirror in her shop. If that monster, and thousands like it, were released into the human world...
"What is the memory?" Elara asked, stepping forward despite Silas's warning glare.
Vespera's eyes gleamed. "Ah, the Weaver speaks. It is a simple thing, really. The memory of a King's weakness. The exact moment the Sovereign of the Winter Court fell in love with a mortal."
"It is a weapon, Elara," Silas warned, his voice tight. "If she has that memory, she can blackmail the most powerful fae in the Glimmer. It would start a war."
"It's a business transaction," Vespera corrected smoothly. "The thread for the memory. If you want to save your precious human city, Warden, you have to decide what is more important. The integrity of your dusty library, or the lives of millions."
Silas stood frozen, his knuckles white around his wooden staff. He was trapped between his sacred oath as the Warden and the impending destruction of the world above.
Before Silas could answer, a tremendous crash echoed from outside the alley. The walls of Vespera's parlor shook, dusting them with plaster.
A horrific screech rent the air—the exact same sound Elara had heard in her shop.
"It seems," Vespera said, her predatory smile fading into genuine alarm, "that time is up for negotiations. The hounds have caught your scent, Warden."
The brass doorway liquefied again, but not to close. It melted away entirely, revealing the alleyway beyond. Standing in the gloom, illuminated by the flickering green lanterns of the market, were three Shade-Scribes. They were larger than the one in the mirror, made of jagged shards of dark glass and writhing shadows, their eyeless heads snapping toward Elara.
They had come for the Weaver.