Remember
“Why are you dragging me deeper into Nástrond?”
“Because we have been everywhere else in Helheim,” Euphemia replies cheerfully. “Might as well take a look up here, no?”
His skull cocks to one side. “So you do have a death wish.” With a sigh, Ash gestures down the hall. “Lead the way, Euphemia.”
A comfortable silence settles over them as they make their way through the halls Euphemia has started to call home.
She keeps sneaking glances at him, searching him for some sign of recognition. As usual, the skull face of his makes him difficult to read.
Catching her staring, Ash breaks the silence. “You do realize the one problem with your death plan?”
Humor edges his voice, though Euphemia can hear the worry beneath it.
“I do not have a death plan,” she retorts, unable to hide her grin. “But please, by all means, tell me the flaw in mine.”
He catches her hand, halting them both. “If I find what I’ve been looking for in this place…” His voice falters. “It will mean something horrible. Something neither of us will want to know.”
It takes her a moment to understand what he’s worried about.
“Because this is Nástrond?”
His skull dips in a single nod.
She laughs, more to settle his nerves than anything.
“I’m not convinced this is Nástrond,” she says innocently. “I mean look at this place.”
In one sweeping motion, Euphemia gestures to the darkened corridors, draped in cobwebs instead of snakes. The floors covered in faded, tattered rugs instead of bones and papery skin.
She hopes it’s enough to make him question what he thinks he knows. To make him wonder if this place is truly Nástrond at all.
It seems to work because he starts walking again, his eyes scanning the walls as if seeing them from a new perspective.
Together, they meander through the quiet, dilapidated halls of this dream version of Thorfell Manor. With every step, Euphemia’s hope churns into something darker.
What if she’s wrong?
What if Ash isn’t Dagfinn?
Or worse—what if this really is nothing more than a dream, and her mind has spun an elaborate, impossible story from grief and desperation until she has mistaken it for truth?
She has built so much hope upon this one impossible possibility. What happens if it crumbles beneath her?
She supposes there is only one way to find out.
They turn down the final corridor.
Ash doesn’t make it more than a single step before he halts beside her.
His attention snags on the walls. On the sconces. On the runner. And then on the wide oaken door at the end of the hall, its strange locking mechanism gleaming in the dimness.
His chest rises and falls more quickly. Something flickers in the depths of his eyes. Recognition.
“I think I know this place.”
Euphemia stays quiet, watching his every move with breathless anticipation.
Ash’s steps stagger forward, as if pulled by some unseen force.
The flames in the sconces flicker as he passes, but he hardly seems to notice them. His gaze is fixed ahead on the one thing Euphemia has spent all night hoping he might see.
Ash arrives at the door.
Euphemia drifts beside him. Ready. Present.
The air stills.
He reaches for the mechanism.
The horse skull covering his face begins to tremble.
Euphemia can deny it no longer. The truth has been waiting at the edges of her mind all night. The name has been there too, begging to be spoken.
And now he remembers it too.
“Dagfinn?”
The runes around the doorframe glow bright red.
A moment later, the strange door is flung off the hinges. Wind gushes through the corridor like a wound torn open. Euphemia braces herself against the windowsill, skirts snapping around her legs, but Dagfinn hunkers down into a wide, warrior stance, fists clenched as he fights the gale.
And then—
The horse skull slips.
It tumbles from his face with a clatter.
Euphemia forgets how to breathe.
But when his face is revealed, it is not one she recognizes. A thick beard twisted with small braids covers his chin, obscuring the features she had been so ready to identify. She stares at this man, bewildered. Searching. Letting her gaze linger.
Then she sees him.
Beyond the facial hair Kelda has kept so neatly groomed in the waking world.
She sees hair tumbling over his shoulders as warm as an autumn harvest.
She sees broad shoulders and a tall frame.
But it’s his eyes. Though she has not seen his eyes on the other side of waking, the blue pierces through her and she knows.
These men are the same.
The beastly man from her dreams.
Her husband.
Dagfinn.
Dagfinn stares at her, his eyes somehow brighter. More alive. More human.
Euphemia’s heart breaks in a completely different way. Because he knows. He finally knows it all. Who he is. This room. This manor. His whole life.
Only, Euphemia realizes with sickening dread that she has not been a part of it.
Though she is his wife now, Dagfinn does not know that.
As far as he knows, she is a spirit in his mind. A specter of his dreams.
Dagfinn studies her, seeming to think it too.
“How did you know my name?”