Disgraced #2
“Thorfell Crag…” Euphemia breathes the words tasting like rugged terrain and rain-filled clouds. But the place only distantly rings any bells. Which Euphemia takes to mean that Kelda likely traveled quite the distance to reach them.
During a civil war.
Across country.
Alone.
“And your travels? They were…uneventful?”
With a mischievous glint, the corner of Kelda’s mouth crooks upward again.
“Mhmm. As safe as anyone’s travels can be at a time like this.
” The woman allows her time enough to nod in the knowing way that anyone would before adding, “But do not fret about me. I would be more worried about yourselves.”
Something tingles along Euphemia’s spine at hearing that. “How do you mean?”
Kelda leans forward again, and Euphemia can’t help but mimic the movement, inching forward, eager to soak up whatever stories this woman has to share.
“Did you not hear?” Kelda begins, one brow cocked. “Something strange has been happening in these parts. All day, the townsfolk were talking about it. The mark of the Devil, as they call it.”
Euphemia’s throat tightens. Somehow, she manages to ask, “W-what mark?”
Kelda shrugs, though her words are anything but apathetic. They’re heavy with soot and myth and something far more sinister. “Ashes. A trail of them leading through town. They say some of them were even shaped like—”
“Hoof prints.”
Euphemia breathes the words like they’re her last dying breath, her thoughts becoming a battlefield of shame and self-loathing. It’s all adding up. The reason she had the dream. The whinnies she thought she heard earlier but conveniently brushed aside. The unsettled state she’s been in all day.
The creature has returned. Perhaps to finish what it started.
But then why not show itself to her?
Euphemia has spent months searching for the nightmare. She’s strained her eyes over the vast stretches of meadow outside of town. Searched the tree line behind her home. Looked in barn stalls and stables, hoping she might find the creature again, face it, and find the answers she seeks.
And though she could always feel the nightmare—lurking, watching—it has remained hidden.
If it has returned, why merely taunt her through dreams alone?
Unless…it’s not here for her.
When Euphemia’s awareness finally returns to the tavern, she searches the room for her family.
Andriana talks to a group of men and women huddled over a game of cards.
Cybele holds Atia on one hip as she pours a table of patrons another round of ale.
Ismene plays in the corner with other children, laughing as if nothing is wrong, when all Euphemia can feel is wrongness.
Kelda’s intense eyes pierce through Euphemia, as searing as sparks of lightning. And finally they break her open. Shatter her until she is nothing more than shards of glass, each one a reflection of something larger. Something Kelda looks like she’s starting to piece together.
“What do you know of ashen hoofprints, little cloud?”
Euphemia staggers back. She never meant for this to happen. It was supposed to be she who found out what was wrong with Kelda, not the other way around.
But now the strange woman knows the truth.
Knows something is off about her as well.
Knows she is wrong.
She is the damned.
She is the one sought out by darkness.
Wiping her sweating palms on her apron, Euphemia tries salvaging the shards of glass that have become her composure. “It’s like you said, the townsfolk were talking about it. I must have overheard someone and forgotten. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
Run, a voice shouts in her skull.
But to run is to admit guilt. And guilt is something Euphemia knows how to harbor.
Knows to keep it tucked deep within her chest like rusted nails pinning her bones together.
So she does not run. Euphemia faces the tavern and prepares herself to amble about like a wisp of fog, carrying food, serving ale, and wiping down tables.
She does not have to wait long before one table in particular summons her.
She hadn’t even noticed Thurstan returning, but now the plump, red-faced man sitting opposite his companions looks as though he’d never even left. As if he’d been waiting for her all this time.
Euphemia searches the taproom for someone else to heed his call. But her mother is busy in the kitchen now, and Cybele is caught up in an exuberant conversation with another patron.
To avoid him now would only incur her mother’s wrath.
With a sigh, Euphemia approaches Thurstan Wardeby.
Leaning back in his creaking chair, he folds his hands over the roundness of his belly. “Well, well, if it isn’t the wench who thinks she’s better than my Conwal.”
Titters ripple across the table.
Euphemia does her best to ignore them. “What’ll it be, Thurstan?”
After serving this slovenly rat for years, she’s grown accustomed to his drunken tirades, but they have worsened over the past few months. Although his ire for her tonight seems especially palpable.
He slams an open hand on the table. Conversations in the tavern fall silent.
“That is exactly right. You know your place is to serve.” His words slur, his resentment unwavering. Thurstan licks his lips and those glossy eyes wobble, drifting down as if he becomes lost in his own world. “You are no better than us. You serve me. Not the other way around.”
Euphemia has half a mind to remind him that he is just a carter—Carter Thurstan, they call him—and that his profession is perhaps even less respectable than hers.
At least she doesn’t have to plod up and down the streets, hauling goods, manure, and even corpses when it’s required.
But she knows better than to utter those thoughts, especially when in the company of disgruntled drunkards like himself.
Biting her tongue, she forces sweetness into her tone. “Yes, Thurstan. I’m here to serve. What do you need?”
Abruptly, he stands. Thick thighs slam into the table, sending tankards wobbling.
Euphemia jumps back. But Thurstan snatches her wrist and strides closer.
“Let go,” she stammers, but her cries fall on deaf ears.
He towers over her, more mountain than man, and leans down so close, she can feel his fetid breath on her face.
“Listen here, girl. I will not stand to be talked down to like some peasant.” Thurstan pounds a fist against his chest. “My family owned land once.” And then his menace shifts.
No longer reserved for Euphemia alone, Thurstan releases her arm and addressed the room with renewed fervor as he launches into a story she’s heard too many times to count.
“My grandfather was once a baron. A respectable man. But he was swindled. Lost our fortune. Our estate.”
Euphemia isn’t the only one in the room to roll her eyes. Everyone knows this story. Of course, he’s leaving out the part where his grandfather gambled all of their assets away.
Most in the tavern turns a shoulder to him. Euphemia looks amongst them, wondering who she might call upon to help her shoo him out of the tavern if he becomes more belligerent. He often does when he brings up his late grandfather.
Fortunately, by the time Thurstan finishes his story, he’s mostly forgotten about her.
He drops down into his chair and reaches for one of the tankards. He throws the mug back, belatedly realizing its empty, before slamming it back atop the table.
“Ale!” he bellows, somehow giving the word two syllables instead of one.
Barely restraining her own irritation, Euphemia grabs the mug. “And do you have the coin for another?”
Thurstan scoffs, eyelids drooping as he shoves his hand deep into his pocket. He fishes around before finally tossing a few pence onto the table. They tumble in different directions, ultimately rolling onto the floor.
Laughter booms from Thurstan and his tablemates.
The irritation that had been simmering in Euphemia starts to boil.
Still, like the obedient daughter she’s expected to be, she plasters on a taut smile and bends down to retrieve her family’s pay.
If only her mother would ban him for good, then she’d never have to deal with him or his remarks again.
Alas, they need every penny that comes into the Saint’s Hearth, and unfortunately, Thurstan and his doltish friends contribute a fair share of them.
For her family’s sake, Euphemia will endure him.
“Might as well get used to it down there,” Thurstan sneers from above. “You’ll be a beggar now without my Conwal to marry you.”
Euphemia squeezes her eyes shut and ignores the ache in her knees as she crawls on the floor. She shoves down the discomfort of her hand pressing into something sticky as she plucks a penny from the ground.
Tankards clank overhead. A momentary reprieve as the table drinks the foam remaining.
All except Thurstan.
He leans under the table. Puts his face right above hers. “I told him you were no good for him. Told him to forget about you and find someone nice.”
Still, Euphemia bites her tongue, a feat that surely would impress even her mother.
“But did he listen?” Thurstan’s face contorts with menace, nostrils flaring as he sucks phlegm from his throat and spits it at the ground. “I told him this would happen. Said you can’t trust those Branwen women. Something cursed about them, there is.”
At the word cursed, Euphemia’s hands clench.
Darkness roils within her.
As if in answer.
As if waiting.
She digs her nails into the wood grain beneath her. She will fight this. She will not succumb to such temptations. Cannot give in to those darkest, carnal urges.
Trembling, Euphemia puts the penny into her pocket and slowly stands up. She half expects him to follow after, but Thurstan merely leans back in his chair, a proud and odious glint in his hazy eyes.
“Right, boys?” he says across the table.
Most of them had been caught up in their own conversations again. But Thurstan is the commanding ram to this obedient flock, and when he speaks, they answer. With a whoop and a holler, they start pounding their ales on the table.