A Face Beneath the Skull #3
Beneath his fur mantle, his chest rises and falls more erratically.
She hears him swallow hard.
Then Ash sticks his neck out. He presses his skull into her fingers and she sucks in a sharp breath at the warm touch. Now that the distance has already been severed, her curiosities piqued, she can think of nothing else but what she might find underneath this bone structure.
Her fingers trace along the jagged jawline.
They plunge into the shadows underneath. Something catches against her fingertips—coarse hair, rougher than she expected. A beard.
Her breath catches.
She follows the line of his jaw, slower now, until her fingers find the curve of a mouth.
Two lips, slightly cracked from dehydration, but human nonetheless.
Something like surprise flashes behind his eyes. Beneath the fur mantle, his chest stills.
Slowly, he reaches a hand up toward hers.
Before he can touch her, Euphemia jerks away—frightened by what that touch could do. What they might be unearthing together.
“So you see,” she says, straightening her skirts again. “I will be searching for my father, regardless of whether you want me exploring these lands or not. And you can either come with me and we can search together, or I will go alone.”
But he is barely paying attention to her now.
That hand of his has reached up through the space between his skull mask and his collar bone like he didn’t know it existed before.
She can see the subtle movement of his hand moving back and forth, his fingers brushing along his jaw, over his chin, and Euphemia can imagine him wondering who he is beneath it all.
Withdrawing his hand, he says, “Fine. We go together then. But you must obey my every command from this moment on.”
Her mouth snaps open to argue, that splinter of familial rebellion shared between her and Ismene rearing its unruly head. But when he angles his darkening eyes at her, she’s able to cage the argument.
“Fine. I’ll be as obedient as I am able,” she agrees.
He groans as if to say he doubts she’s able to be very obedient at all. Then, with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, Ash surveys the horizon. “Where would you like to begin then?”
“Me? I was hoping you’d have some suggestions. After all, you know this place better than I do.”
He makes a dry, humorless sound. “It is impossible to know this place at all. There are landmarks, sure. Places I’ve encountered time and time again.
But Helheim is always shifting. There are times I find Nástrond here in the moors.
Other times it’s shrouded in the woods of the damned. Or on the shores of the drowned dead.”
Horror creeps in. “Is this entire place so horrific?”
The man holds her gaze with the utmost severity.
Something like sympathy bleeds into her. “Is there no place where you can simply…rest?”
“This is not where the dead come to rest. In fact, if you loved your father at all, you should hope not to find him anywhere in these lands.”
That sword twists through her heart again and just like that, her sympathy is gone.
Clearly, he’s still trying to dissuade her from exploring these lands anymore. Perhaps the more she can get him to focus on himself, the less he’ll keep trying to scare her off.
“What about you?” she asks.
“What about me?”
“Well, let’s start with that mask. Why do you wear it?”
“It’s not a mask.”
She nearly laughs. “Yes, it is. I felt your face underneath it.”
“I know what you felt, but it is no mask!” he thunders, the ground quaking. The thick roots quiver in the earth, seeming to retreat. With a shaky breath, Ash reins in the rage. “I have tried removing it. It does not budge.”
“But I felt your face just now.”
“I know,” he says softly. And then softer still, “I felt it too.”
He starts to retreat again. Into the darkness. Into isolation.
Euphemia gets the feeling that’s part of what brought him into this mess to begin with, so she switches topics before he can become lost again.
“Fine. We don’t talk about the mask—your face—or whatever it may be.” She watches his shoulders ease. “What about me. You remembered my name. How come?”
“I don’t know.” He sighs as if already exhausted by her questions. But if they don’t dig deeper, they’ll never find anything.
“Come on. There has to be a reason.”
“I’m sure there is. But I do not know it.”
Euphemia folds her arms. “Alright then. What else do you remember?”
“Nothing.”
“There has to be something.”
“I already told you. I have forgotten nearly everything—my name, my home, my life.” His voice thickens with emotion. “Everything. But I somehow remember you. I do not know why, only that it is the truth. It’s like…”
He trails off.
She feels as though she’s dangling over the edge of a cliff.
“Like what?” she asks tentatively.
Through the skull, she sees his eyes pinch shut. He won’t look at her as he replies, “It is like you are my True North. Every time I am lost, you appear like a bright star in the darkness. Whenever you are around, I feel like I might find my way home.”
The depths of her stomach tighten.
The blasted heat in her face won’t subside.
But she cannot let him do these things to her. These sinful reactions…she needs to be done with them. That was a past version of herself. The more youthful, heedless version who didn’t understand that actions had consequences. Euphemia knows that now.
She tosses her dark curls over her shoulder and simply says, “Oh.”
He watches her, gauging her for a reaction.
Euphemia refuses to give him one.
Swallowing the thickness in her throat, she dregs her tavern wench smile from the swamp that is her cursed soul, and says with all her teeth, “All the more reason to keep me around then.”
She can’t see much of his expression, only eyes that scrunch with—is that amusement she finds reflected in them? It’s gone just as fast as it arrives. Darkness casts a shadow behind them, their brightness dimming.
Euphemia hardly knows this man, and yet, already it breaks something in her to see how easily his hope is dimmed.
“Come,” she says gently. “Let us find the answers we both seek.”