A Face Beneath the Skull
Once they’re safe outside, Ash sets Euphemia on her feet and stands back, his shoulders angled with something like triumph.
Like he expects gratitude…
Euphemia supposes he technically saved her from what would’ve otherwise been a grotesque and brutal death.
But he has also robbed her of the one thing she wanted.
The one person who might have healed her. Made this wound hurt a little less.
As the beast of a man steps back, Euphemia charges forward. Her palms slam against his chest.
“I told you to put me down! I told you to leave me in there!”
“Leave you there?” His head cocks to one side. And he lets her hit him once. Twice. Three times. Before finally grabbing her by the shoulders and holding her at bay. “If I had left you, you’d be dead.”
“I never asked you to save me!”
Not only does her voice break, but so does the atmosphere around them. Like something in the ether snapping, tension ripples across the eerie expanse. The air becomes colder. More snowflakes drift past her, freezing to the touch.
Tension melts from his shoulders and Ash steps closer.
But Euphemia does not want his nearness anymore. She did earlier, but he was nowhere to be found. Mimicking his movement, she steps backward.
He halts, his voice hardening into something serious. “Look, I do not know your father, but I promise you, he was not in Nástrond.”
“You don’t know that—” Her voice cracks around the grief. “I heard him. He was in pain. He was crying out for help.”
A heavy sigh eases from Ash’s chest. “That was not him. Nástrond is not a place for simple men.” He pauses as if that will be the end of that. But seeing the stubbornness flash in Euphemia’s eyes, he rolls his and adds, “Well, was your father a murderer?”
“He was a soldier. What of it?” Euphemia crosses her arms in defiance.
Ash just shakes his head. “No. Not like that. The life of a soldier is one bound by honor and duty. By loyalty and oaths.”
Once again, his hand raises up like he wants to drag it through a thick head of hair that he’s disappointed to find lacking. It’s not until then that she remembers this beast of a man is not her enemy.
Watching him battle the disappointment, Euphemia finds herself wondering what that head of hair might’ve looked like before he became the creature before her.
Ash lowers his hand with a huff. “I mean a murderer in the truest sense of the word. Did he kill without honor? Without cause?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “No.”
“Did he rape women?”
“Of course not!” She clutches her collarbone. “Why would you even—”
“And the people who knew him best, did they trust him?”
Flashes of their life before her father’s death flood her mind.
Sunny days spent on his shoulders, plucking apples from the tree in the garden.
The sense of pride that would wash over her whenever he’d choose her to go to market with him.
How he’d sit her on his lap and whisper in her ear all the secrets of brewing and trading, even though she knew they weren’t secrets at all.
Just one father sharing his joy with the only daughter who seemed equally excited by it.
Euphemia could think of no person she had ever trusted more.
But she wasn’t the only one who adored him.
No matter where her father went, people gravitated toward him.
They enjoyed his company. His laughter. The way he put people at ease and how he was always willing to lend them a hand.
It’s why the tavern became as successful as it did.
People came not only for the booze and refuge, but because they loved him.
“Yes,” she says at last, echoes of memories still fading. “He was a good man. Everyone knew it.”
“Then your father is not in there. Nástrond is for the worst of mankind.”
The certainty with which he says it is already making her feel a little better. Still, her mouth worries over the words, “But I heard him. I swear I did. I’d know the sound of his voice anywhere.”
Solemnly, his skull bobs. “This place does things like that. Plays cruel tricks. Tries to lure you in while you’re at your weakest.”
The way he says it makes it sound as if he’s speaking from experience.
Euphemia bites her lip to stop herself from asking what it was like for him the first time he was in there. The harrowing, distant sound of his voice makes her think that perhaps it’s not a memory he would care to revisit.
Still, she’s not fully convinced.
It had just been so real. It’s difficult to believe.
“Only the murderers and the rapists go there? No one else? You’re certain?”
His head jerks back, and Euphemia can’t tell if he’s offended or just surprised to hear her utter such atrocious things.
After being chased by a ravenous serpent, falling into the sludge of the dead, and narrowly escaping with their lives, Euphemia can’t be bothered to be more indirect or chaste.
“Yes,” Ash answers. “The murderers, the rapists, and worse.”
She’s about to ask him what could be worse, when something else occurs to her. “How do you know all of this?”
“Know what?”
“About Nástrond. I thought you didn’t remember anything.”
The flames of his eyes dim as his gaze falls to the ground. She’s learning to associate this look to mean he’s retreating into his thoughts. “I don’t know how I know. I just do.”
Another realization jumps to the forefront of her mind. “Inside Nástrond, you remembered me.”
He inclines his head. “I did, Euphemia. I have thought of little else since I last saw you.”
She tries to hide the flush rushing to her cheeks. “How is that possible?”
This time, he does not answer her.
Instead, his shoulders become rigid beneath the thick furs adorning them. As if he’s not saying something. If he wants to have his secrets, that’s fine with her. All that matters is he is remembering. That feels like progress, at least for one of them.
She’s not even sure why she cares so much. He is a stranger to her. A monster, by looks alone.
It takes her a shameful moment to realize it’s because he is a mystery, one she is curious to crack.
Euphemia clears her throat. “That is wonderful news. But do you remember anything else?”
His silence is deafening.
Her elation fades. “I see.”
But she does not let herself get too dejected.
This strange creature, this humanesque thing, she wants nothing more than to understand it. Understand why she’s dreaming about him—surely, the equine head is an obvious connection to the horse haunting her. But why would she be dreaming about someone who has forgotten himself?
There must be something she’s not yet understanding.
Many things, probably.
But continuing to hound Ash with questions he likely does not know the answers to will prove meaningless at best—and at worst, might push him over an edge she suspects he’s closer to than even he realizes.
With that dread newly awakened, Euphemia turns her attention to the things that might be safer to discuss. “Where were you earlier?”
“Earlier?” he parrots with a small amount of mocking annoyance that seems to suggest she be more specific.
“Before you came in Nástrond. I arrived at the river, but you weren’t there like you normally are.” Hearing the desperation in her own voice, Euphemia quickly recounts her reentry into the dream so he might not hear it himself. “And so, I thought maybe if I approached the nightmare—"
“Helhest,” he corrects, annoyingly.
Euphemia rolls her eyes. “The helhest, then—I figured if I approached it, you’d appear like you always have. But then I drew nearer, and…”
The memory engulfs her. Not just one, but two. Dozens. Hundreds. Every time she has encountered the nightmare, she relives each and every dreadful encounter before, whether dreaming or real.
And every single one of them drags her back to that night.
It feels like hooves stomp her chest.
Until a snort pulls her back into the present. “And you’re surprised the helhest chased you?”
“Yes,” she says at first, not hearing him fully. “I mean no. I’m not surprised it did. I just—”
Laughter echoes deeper within his skull. “A helhest is a shepherd of the dead. Not some pet meant to be tamed and ridden.”
“I wasn’t trying to tame it or ride it. I was—”
“You were searching for me.”
The way he says it does strange things to her belly.
He sounds so sure. And far too smug for her own liking.
Euphemia all but crams her heels into the earth. “I was not searching for you, specifically. I was merely…” she grasps at half-formed thoughts. “I merely thought I had found the recipe for this place, so I was testing my theory.”
Something about what she just said suddenly strikes him like an arrow.
Where his head had previously been lolled with amusement and bravado, now it snaps upright.
“A theory.” He speaks the word the same way she might speak to an angel if one drifted down from Heaven and landed before her, and Euphemia understands the word theory triggered something.
Whatever recognition he finds though, he does not share.
Euphemia decides not to pry. Not this time. He looks to shaken, like the memory is still settling in.
Instead, she asks again, “Where were you when I arrived at the river?”
The flames of his eyes snap to her. “I was watching you, wretched creature.”
Euphemia stills.
Her body becomes ice and flame.
Half frozen in fear.
Half ready to burn like lightning until she is far, far away.
“You were…watching me?” She forces the shaky words out.
He seems to sense her distress, and hastily adds, “Nothing nefarious, I assure you. But I had to be sure you weren’t a spirit playing tricks on me. There are too many of those around.”
His voice takes on a distant quality near the end. That alone is enough to soothe her nerves.
Clearly, not his though.
Whatever demons he’s now grappling with internally, Euphemia is certain she never wants to confront them. And the longer he spends revisiting them in his mind, the chillier the night becomes.
In an attempt to lighten the mood, Euphemia flashes him a wry smile. “Well, did I pass your test, then?”
He nods, slowly. Like he has to drag himself away from those unseen demons.