The Vast Reaches of Helheim #3
He reaches a hand up to his head as if he’s trying to drag his fingers through hair. Euphemia can almost see it clearly. The autumn locks. The sharp features. If only she could find out for certain.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?” she asks, once again caught up in her own thoughts. Remembering the conversation, she shakes herself into focus. “Oh. Don’t be. My father’s been dead a long while.”
This time, the tremor that rumbles the earth is fiercer.
Ash doesn’t have enough time to catch her before Euphemia is bucked to the ground. He throws himself atop her though, shielding her from the small bits of rubble that crumble from the ceiling.
Something swells inside of her.
If this man is not her husband, God save her…
The ground stills again.
For a moment, Ash does not move. He stares down at her with penetrating eyes. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice hitches.
Ash leans back onto his heels.
“It’s strange,” he says, glancing around the room as if the answer might be written somewhere on the walls. “In all my time here, the only time the earth has trembled is when I’ve been with you.”
Euphemia gives a half-hearted chuckle, and he offers her his hand to help her stand.
She’s about to take it, when something dawns.
Perhaps the tremors aren’t a coincidence.
She thinks back to the first earthquake, the one that came when she suggested he see his reflection in the river. At the time, she thought maybe it had to do with him not seeing his face, or not knowing what he looked like. But the two just now had nothing to do with his face.
Both, however, had come when they spoke of her father. Of his death.”
Perhaps it’s more than confronting his own image. Perhaps it’s about confronting things he cannot remember. His own face. His own father. His loss.
“What is it?” he asks when she doesn’t take his hand nor push it away.
“I’d like to try something,” she all but whispers.
His hand lowers. “Am I going to like this?”
“Perhaps. We’ll see if it’s successful.” When Ash starts to stand, Euphemia pulls him back down. “If my theory is right, we might as well stay on the ground.”
He snorts as if to suggest he doesn’t like it already. But he settles over her anyway, ready to shield her again.
“Ready,” he says.
“Maybe we should talk about my father,” Euphemia says, testing the waters. When nothing rumbles, she swallows the thickness in her throat and continues. “We were very close, he and I. He taught me everything I know about running a tavern and brewing ale.”
Ash snorts again. His voice is warm as he says, “I didn’t know you knew how to do either of those things.”
Euphemia shrugs. “Well, between running for our lives and running from our lives, I guess I haven’t had a chance to tell you much about myself.”
His weight shifts as Ash leans closer. “Tell me everything.”
And so she does.
Euphemia tells him about her life in Nottinghamshire.
About her sisters. Her mother. The Saint’s Hearth and all the colorful townsfolk who stop by day after day.
She starts with the stories that bring her happiness: playing in the meadow as children, helping with a bountiful autumn harvest, making her first brew.
Ash listens to every word.
The ground does not shake once.
Then she guides the conversation to the story she’s been leading up to.
With shame heating her chest, she tells him about the boy she thought she loved. About a late-night gathering in a meadow. A daughter too eager. Too curious. And a father too doting for his own good.
“He came to the meadow looking for me,” Euphemia says. “And he found me just as the nightmare appeared. I was walking toward it. I wanted to pet it. I’d never seen such a creature before and it seemed like a miracle sent from God just for me.”
Ash reaches across her and wipes the tears from her eyes.
Euphemia leans into his hand. Briefly.
“He jumped between us to save me,” she says, the ground already starting to rumbles. Through the tears, through the agony of reliving this moment again, Euphemia forces herself to continue. She looks down at her hands. “You see, he was only there that night because of me.”
The ground shudders beneath them.
“He died saving me.”
It bucks beneath them, the stone cracking under the strain.
“It was all my fault.”
Stones rupture from the walls. They fly across the room, narrowly missing them.
Which is fortunate because Ash doesn’t seem to notice.
He’s hunkered over her, rigid where he was perched, but his eyes have gone distant.
Hollow. The blue irises sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness within the skull. Until small flames appear.
“No,” Euphemia breathes, confusion in the word. “Wait. That’s not…”
The flames burn brighter, as if they’re rising into place.
The earth rocks and bucks. Debris spills from the ceiling, skittering across the floor.
The dream is coming apart. It’s splintering at all ends.
Any moment now, she’ll be ripped from this place.
But what will she find when she returns? Who will she find?
“Ash?” she says through the roaring, quaking grumbles of the earth.
There is no recognition in his gaze.
Euphemia feels herself losing him.
So she does the only thing she can think to do.
Leaning up from where she lies, Euphemia presses a hand to his bare chest. The touch is meant to tell him she is there. That she is with him. That he is not alone.
When even that doesn’t reach him, she dips her chin beneath the rough edge of his skull.
She plants a kiss upon his neck.
The earth shudders to a stop.
Her lips release, but for one frightful moment, she does not move.
Is too afraid of looking up and finding those firelit eyes staring down at her again.
But it’s not the flames that scare her. It’s the look of unknowing.
The fear of being a stranger to him again.
Not after everything they’ve endured. Survived.
After everything she’s just told him while he’s listened and comforted.
Before her chest can crack, a tender hand touches her chin.
His fingers gently bring her head up to face his.
Relief washes through her when her eyes meet his crystal blue gaze.
He stares at her, unblinking. A shuddering breath moving through him.
“That was reckless,” he says.
She flashes a rueful smile. “My theory was right…mostly.”
For a moment, he seems too distracted by her lips to respond. His thumb brushes over her chin, hesitating.
Finally, he releases her. “What was your theory? How did you make the ground quake?”
“It’s not me. It’s you.” Ash offers her his hand again, and this time she accepts, the two of them rising from the rubble. Euphemia continues. “It has to do with your memories, I think. It seems when you are confronted by them, this place doesn’t like it.”
He taps the chin of his skull. “I thought I was starting to remember something. But it went away so quickly, I felt like I was falling into darkness until you—”
“Brought you back,” Euphemia supplies for him, fighting the blush creeping into her face.
Laughter rumbles in his chest, quiet but not hidden.
Euphemia focuses instead on what they’ve learned.
“It was working,” she says, considering his words. “But the curse fought back before you could fully grasp it.”
“The curse?” he asks, wryness in his tone.
She waves him off, unwilling to be deterred. “Perhaps we need something stronger. I was using my memories to try to remind you of things from your life. But perhaps that’s not good enough. Maybe we need something truly yours.”
“If it means you might grace me with your soft lips again, I am willing to try anything.”
That treacherous heart of hers stutters.
She shields her face so he cannot see the crimson shade that becomes of her.
“Where do you suggest we look?” he asks.
And then, as soon as the question leaves his mouth, the answer comes to her.
Euphemia glances around the upper floor again.
Something about the upper floor strikes her as familiar.
She runs to the edge of the landing and peers over the bannister. There is the entryway into the foyer. The front door. The closet. It might be covered in bones and hissing snakes, but now that she’s seeing the shape beneath the nightmare, she cannot believe she didn’t realize it before.
This is Thorfell Manor, or at least some dream version of it.
It’s Dagfinn’s home.
And if her theory is right—if Ash and her husband are one and the same—then there is only one place left to look.
Euphemia races back across the upper landing, grabs his hand and starts pulling him down the corridors.
“I just thought of one more place we haven’t checked yet.”