Cursed to Dream
“Cursed?”
The word is the falling of a guillotine.
Euphemia’s head rolls, her thoughts spilling onto the floor.
No. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was meant to escape the curse, not find herself trapped in another. She feels herself inching closer toward damnation, toward the cursed man in the bed.
Kelda leaps in front of her. “That’s close enough.”
“But… I am his wife.”
“I do not care who you are.” A muscle in Kelda’s jaw twitches as if it is taking great restraint from her not to tackle Euphemia again. “Only I tend to him. Understood?”
Obedience seeps from her pores, and Euphemia finds herself nodding vigorously.
From where she stands, she can still see Dagfinn from over the top of Kelda’s head. But he is nothing more than a long body shrouded in wolf pelts, his red hair splayed across the thin pillows.
She longs to see his face.
Longs to know the man she has wed.
“What is his curse?” she asks, the word like bile on her tongue.
Kelda is silent for a moment. Her shoulders bob with indifference but there is a wince in her expression. “Dagfinn has not woken in almost a year.”
“A year?”
Euphemia doesn’t know what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t that.
She stares harder at the bed, eyes scanning for that steady rise and fall of a chest that signals life. At this point, she wouldn’t put it past Kelda to trick her into marrying a dead man. But then she sees the subtle movement of his ribs. Thank God he is alive.
But what life is he living is he’s condemned to sleep?
A shudder shakes the base of her skull. Euphemia can think of no worse fate than being trapped in her dreams.
But the pity she feels quickly warps into anger.
Indignation.
Injustice.
“You let me marry a cursed man,” Euphemia growls at the woman, momentarily forgetting she had just recently had her pinned against the wall.
Maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe she wants the physical altercation again.
Wants to strike her in return the way she had struck Thurstan.
Because this woman is just as infuriating.
She lied to her. Pretended she was doing Euphemia a favor, when in reality she entangled her in a curse she never would have wanted.
“You tricked me.”
With a roll of her cold eyes, Kelda grabs Euphemia by the arm, drags her out of the room, and slams the door shut behind them.
“It was no trick,” Kelda snarls, reaching for the key. “You married him of your own accord.”
“I may have, but I did not know he was cursed! You never told me—”
“You never asked.”
The words bite out of Kelda as she twists the key in the lock and shoves it back into her pocket. Retrieving the candelabrum from where she had set it on the ground, the two of them stand there, staring each other down like vipers ready to strike.
Euphemia’s mouth pops open, an argument primed on her lips.
But in the dark confines of the stairwell, all her bluster is lost.
Besides, Kelda is right. Euphemia had known this agreement was too good to be true. She might not have known the specifics, but she had felt it the moment Kelda crossed her path. Something had been off about her. And yet, Euphemia had accepted the offer anyway.
Truthfully, she isn’t sure that knowing about his curse would’ve changed anything.
She needed an escape. This arrangement provided one.
The only difference is that now it’s not as easy of a fix for her own curse as she originally thought it might be.
When Euphemia clamps her mouth shut, Kelda pushes past her and begins descending the tower.
Shadows shudder on the stone walls as the light from the candelabrum fades.
Euphemia refuses to be left behind in the darkness again.
Chasing after her, Euphemia’s voice carries throughout the stairwell. “What happened to him?”
“That is none of your concern.”
“I’m making it my concern,” Euphemia replies with mocking sweetness, earning her a brief glare from the woman.
But they keep moving, trudging down the stairs with haste as if they can outrun each other.
But the stairwell is as infinite as this cursed arrangement.
They are trapped together. And if this is to be the rest of Euphemia’s life, she will not be left in the dark, literally nor figuratively.
“He’s my husband now, thanks to you. I think I deserve to know how he came to be in the state that he’s in. ”
Reaching the bottom steps, Kelda whirls on her. “It does not matter how Dagfinn was cursed! Only that he is.”
Her ferocity rattles the stones.
The two of them stand there, chests heaving, eyes locked.
Euphemia can all but hear her mother in her head. It didn’t take long for you to be reduced to your anger. But Euphemia can’t bring herself to stand down. Not now when the answers she seeks are so close. Not when they are the least she deserves.
A hand falls from the shadows, landing on Kelda’s shoulder.
Asvald steps forward, towering over her like her personal angel. His presence is both gentle and stern, things Euphemia did not know could coexist until now.
Kelda shrugs away his touch. “I’m fine, Asvald. Honestly.”
“If you say as much.” He backs away, arms raised until he reaches the wall. Leaning against it, he folds his arms over his broad chest, gaze settling on Euphemia. However, his words are for Kelda. “You dragged her into this.”
“I know,” the woman grumbles.
“She has a right to know.”
“I know!” Kelda says more firmly. She presses her face into her tattooed hand, rubbing her temples.
Even this small display of frustration is more compromise than Euphemia has seen from her yet. It makes her stand a little taller, eager to hear what she might be willing to share.
Slowly, Euphemia climbs down the final step, gravitating toward Asvald in case she needs to rely upon him for protection again.
She thinks back to that moment in the tower, and what she would’ve done without him.
At the time, she had been so surprised and frightened, Euphemia had only been thinking about the physical threat of it all.
But now, a new detail stands out.
Something she hadn’t been able to fully focus on before.
“What did you mean when you said he called out my name?”
The air in the corridor shifts.
She knows she should’ve let Kelda speak in her own time, lest she might spook her into a frenzy again. But Euphemia cannot help it. Once her curiosities are stoked, there is no containing them.
Fortunately, Kelda merely sighs, her head slumping fully now.
Wisps of blonde hair cover her eyes, but they cannot conceal the weight in her tone.
The exhaustion. The disappointment. “He’s been doing that for a time now, muttering in his sleep.
Most days, I cannot tell what he’s saying.
Ramblings and mutterings with no real meaning.
” She crosses the narrow hall to stare out one of the arched windows, slick with rain.
“But then I heard it. An unusual name cried out in the dead of night. Euphemia.”
Euphemia’s stomach flips.
She glances to Asvald, but he is a picture of stoicism, a gargoyle on the wall, watching.
Kelda sighs. “For a full month, that name did not cross my mind. Until he said it again. Euphemia. Euphemia.”
Kelda looks over, gaze locking upon her like a bear trap around the throat.
“A name spoken like a dying breath.” Kelda’s gaze veers toward the dark stairwell, releasing Euphemia.
“Asvald and I began searching. We asked everyone in town. Then we asked in neighboring towns. We searched for someone with a mother—a sister—a daughter—anyone named Euphemia.” With heavy finality, she says, “We found none and gave up for a brief time. But there was no ignoring it. Dagfinn called out that name more and more, this woman becoming a constant presence in our home even when she was not there.”
The moon casts a wispy sheen of light across Kelda’s weary face.
“You were never watching my family,” Euphemia says with uneasy understanding. “You were watching me.”
Kelda gives an indifferent shrug. “I was curious. Dagfinn spoke your name, but nothing else. I wanted to know who this Euphemia was.”
New questions spring to mind, and Euphemia frowns. “But why have me marry him? You’ve said nothing about him demanding you bring me to be his wife.”
A curious glance is exchanged between Kelda and Asvald, like the two of them can strategize through sight alone. Ultimately, Asvald gives her a bob of his head that appears to be the permission she needed.
“Truth be told,” Kelda says. “At first, we believed you might be the person responsible for his curse.”
“Me?” Euphemia balks. “But—why? How?”
Holding up her hands, Kelda placates her. “Be at ease. It did not take long for me to understand that you were not involved.”
Relief washes through her.
But the uneasiness remains.
“Then why am I his wife now?”
Another look is exchanged between the two northerners, and in it Euphemia can see a lifetime of interactions between them. There is an ease with which they communicate with one another, and Euphemia finds herself wondering how long Asvald has been in her employ.
He ushers Kelda to continue, though she seems resistant to do so.
“You became his wife because I thought perhaps marrying you would lift the curse.” Hastily, she defends herself.
“I know. It sounds foolish. But my Dagfinn held secrets in the months leading up to his curse. He went on travels, not telling me where he was going or when he’d return.
I thought perhaps he came to Nottinghamshire, met the beautiful daughter of the alewife, and fell in love.
And you hear tales about love conquering evil.
I thought maybe it would fix him. It appears I was wrong. Again.”
Kelda’s voice cracks on the final words, leaving Euphemia splintered as well.
For the first time since entering the tower, Euphemia can see the situation from Kelda’s point of view.
A desperate mother.
A curse with an unclear solution.
Desperation. Helplessness. Fear.
Bedfellows Euphemia is all too familiar with.
And what do desperate people do for the ones they love?
Anything.