Her Dagfinn
Euphemia refuses to open her eyes.
She does not care if the nightmare comes and burns her to pieces.
She will not look.
She will stay in the darkness of her eyelids all dream long if she has to.
Anything to avoid a dream world without him.
A brimstone tears her from her despair. “I take it that means it didn’t work?”
Euphemia’s eyes burst wide. Crystal eyes watch her from the upper landing. Autumn hair braided back against his scalp. His beard shaven, she’s surprised to find.
They’re back in Nástrond she realizes. Only it’s no longer Nástrond at all.
The bones and dust are gone. The cobwebs and deterioration, vanished.
It looks exactly like Thorfell Manor now only more luminous, like what she imagines it might’ve looked like before it had been gutted.
Paintings line the walls. There are vases on the floor with actual plants growing inside them.
There is a warmth about this place.
It makes Euphemia never want to leave.
It also makes her remember that it is just a dream.
Not real.
Although, something about what he said gives her pause.
If this is all in her head, then her head already knows that it did work. The dream ward saved Dagfinn. It woke him up.
So why would her Dagfinn say otherwise?
Euphemia marches up the stairs to meet him on the upper landing. “What do you mean it didn’t work?”
He flinches from her intensity as she stands on the tips of her toes just to stare him down.
Dagfinn gestures around him. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”
The breath leaves her lungs.
Euphemia settles back onto the pads of her feet, her mind whirring.
This doesn’t make sense. If Dagfinn is here—truly—then what is the thing in Thorfell Manor?
The moment she questions it, the answer barrels into her.
Spirits.
“It’s alright,” Dagfinn says reassuringly. “These things happen. Sometimes it takes me weeks to get a draught right. Tell me what happened and we can try again—”
Euphemia reaches for him. She touches him all over. His face. His chest. His arms.
“Is it really you then? Are you truly here?”
Dagfinn doesn’t seem to mind the contact, though he turns concerns by her question. “Yes, I am here. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Euphemia tears away from him and starts pacing.
“Euphemia?” he asks, warning darkening his tone. “What happened?”
As coherently as she is able, Euphemia tells him everything. About her failed attempts to locate the roseroot. About Maryam’s unexpected arrival. About the dream ward. About the Dagfinn who was all wrong.
“I don’t understand,” he says once she’s finished, a harrowing look in his eyes. “What would be making my body move while I am not in it?”
“I think I have an idea.” She swallows, and tells him about the strange things that have been happening. “Your mother confirms it. There are spirits in Thorfell Manor. And I think she might have accidentally invited one into your body.”
“Hugr,” he breathes the word like a curse. Then he slams a fist against the stone wall, sending the framed art swinging.
“Do you know how to deal with them?”
Dagfinn gives a humorless laugh. “No. They are of the living world, not of Helheim.”
Sensing his missing her meaning, she tries again. “But do you know anything about the spirits in your home? Your mother said your father saw them too. I just assumed that meant you might have seen them before, or maybe you knew something about them.”
He looks up, eyes sharp.
“My father saw them?”
Euphemia nods, though cautiously. “According to your mother, they haunted him quite often.”
Pushing himself off the wall, Dagfinn marches down the hallway.
Euphemia chases after him. “Where are you going?”
“To find my father. I think he might be able to tell us about the hugr stealing my body.”
“Are you sure this will work?” Euphemia asks once they’re at Otho’s door.
Dagfinn shrugs. “Not really. But do you have any other ideas?”
“Completely at a loss.”
“Alright.”
Dagfinn barges into the room like he’s ready for a battle. Then again, Euphemia supposes if she had just been told something was inside her body without her permission making her do whatever it wanted, she would be aggressively seeking answers and a solution too.
They stand in the bedchamber, waiting.
And then Dagfinn’s father appears on the bed once more.
“My son, what are you doing here—”
Dagfinn kneels beside the bed with alarming haste. “A hugr haunts our home, and you never told me?”
His father’s eyes widen with fear. “I hoped they would leave you alone since your hands are clean of the wrongdoings that harmed them.”
Dagfinn’s head momentarily falls forward. He sighs and speaks through exhaustion. “What wrongdoings did you do to them?”
“I didn’t do anything to them. It was my father who stole their lands.”
“Why would they torment you then if it was only Old Man Rayner who did them wrong?”
“A question I asked myself daily,” his dad says, though his eyes are starting to shift around the room.
“You’re lying,” Euphemia says, forgetting that Otho’s spirit cannot see nor hear her. She says to Dagfinn more firmly. “He’s lying.”
“I know,” Dagfinn says over his shoulder.
“What was that?” his father asks.
“I said I know you’re lying. I just don’t know why. You’re not the lord of Thorfell Manor anymore. I am. That is my inheritance now. My burden. My wrongs to make right.”
His dad blows through his lips. “Don’t bother. They’re all dead now.”
“Exactly. They’re dead and haunting my home. They’ve taken control of my body.”
At that, his father’s eyes widen. “What? That isn’t possible.”
Dagfinn throws his arms in the air. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is. So why don’t you skip the bullshit and tell me what you know.”
A hush falls over the room.
A lifetime of emotion washes over Otho’s face.
It’s clear whatever he’s about to share will cost him greatly.
But it will cost Dagfinn more if he doesn’t.
Wincing through the shame, Otho finally tells him.
“Look, when I inherited Thorfell, I didn’t question anything.
I just accepted my duties and led as best as I could.
” His gaze drifts out the window, his voice becoming distant.
“But a few years back, Percival brought it to my attention that there was a clause in the original deed that had never been fulfilled. A debt owed to the family who had been slain here.”
Dagfinn’s head shakes slowly. “I thought they all died.”
“Most of them did. The father and mother were butchered in the sitting room. But one of the servants grabbed the small children and fled. They never found her, nor the little whelps. Would’ve been young though, maybe three and four years old. I doubt either of them even remember that life.
“But Percival convinced me it could be a problem if anyone came looking into the deed. So, we forged a new one. We removed the Walsham family name from it and I buried the original in the garden.”
Slowly Dagfinn rises.
His hands are trembling.
“This is the legacy I have inherited?”
“You were never meant to know. No one was,” his father says, as if that fixes it. As if it removes the weight of generational harm.
Otho’s image flickers.
He stares down at himself, a lightness to him that hadn’t been there before.
“I never thought I’d be able to get that off my chest.”
And then, Otho Varinsson vanishes.
This time, Dagfinn doesn’t get to say goodbye.
This time, it doesn’t look like he wants to.
Dagfinn turns his back to the bed and slowly lowers himself to sit. He buries his face in his hands.
Euphemia crosses the room and sits beside him.
“You know,” he says. “When he died, I was told everything of his was now mine. This manor. This room. This bed. I was meant to wear his clothes. To sleep here, right where he died.”
His throat chokes out a sound that Euphemia has only ever heard herself make.
His hands fall from his face and Dagfinn stares at them, head shaking.
“I was meant to live his life, to carry out his legacy. And all I remember thinking is I can’t do any of it without him.
I didn’t want to. I didn’t feel like a leader.
I didn’t want the responsibility. And I think that’s partly why I wanted to bring him back. I wanted him to lead.”
Slowly, he glances over to her.
Euphemia lets a soft smile flutter the corners of her lips.
He tries to return the smile, but it looks more like a wince.
His gaze falls back to his hands. “I loved my father. I always will. And I can’t say I won’t miss him every day.” Dagfinn pauses for a long moment. “But I think I will make a damn good baron. I think I can do right by our people.”
Euphemia gives a gentle squeeze to his arm. “Far better than Thurstan or Percival would be.”
Dagfinn’s demeanor darkens the moment the name leaves her lips.
“What do you mean about Percival?”
Euphemia had nearly forgotten she hadn’t shared any of this with him.
There hadn’t been a point before he had his memories back.
But now she tells him everything. About Percival’s insensitive proposal.
Cybele mentioning Thurstan’s trip to Thorfell.
Percival conveniently revealing a deed with Thurstan’s family mentioned in it.
When Euphemia catches him all up, Dagfinn buries his face in his hands again. “So we need to find the real deed and give the hugr what they were promised.”
“Perhaps not,” Euphemia says, a new thought occurring to her. “I could just make the wakefulness draught and give it to you.”
Dagfinn grimaces. “I’m not sure it would work.”
“Why not?”
“Because my body is already awake.” He stretches his fingers and looks at his hands front and back. “Besides, I’m not sure the hugr would even drink it. Spirits don’t eat or drink that I know of, anyway.”
Euphemia sucks in a deep breath and pats her hands on her lap. “Alright then. I’ll find the deed, get more roseroot, and make you your draught.”
Dagfinn glances over at her apologetically. “Meanwhile, I’ll be here doing nothing while you’re busy saving my whole family and inheritance.”
Euphemia laughs. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure there will be battle enough left for you once you awaken. Percival says the town is demanding your presence at the next town assembly.”
Dagfinn groans. “Now I remember why I didn’t want to be lord.”
She smirks, though for some reason she thinks he will handle it all with ease.
Her gaze catches sight of splintering in the wall behind him. Soon the dream will end for her, and Euphemia can finally make things right. She’ll find the deed. Find more roseroot. Brew the draught. And her life will finally be normal.
When she notices Dagfinn again, he staring at her with something like awe. “When all of this is said and done, I might just have to marry you, Euphemia.”
Her face burns hotter than the sun.
Her stomach twists.
Heat pools in her body.
But just as swiftly as the flush takes over, in comes a torrent of doubt.
He’s only saying that out of kindness, or perhaps just to be a flirt. Once he finds out they’ve already wed and that he had no say in the matter, he likely isn’t going to be to pleased.
Before he can scrutinize the panic in her eyes, Euphemia jumps to her feet. She scrambles to the door, throwing it wide, counting down the seconds for the dream to end and save her from this moment. This proposition. This confrontation.
Dagfinn leaps after her.
He grabs the door, closing it before she even has a chance to slip through.
“Did I say something to offend you?” Then with a wolfish slightly insecure grin he says, “Or is it you no longer wish to kiss me now that I do not have a skull for a face?”
Heat rushes to her face again.
“I didn’t want to kiss you then either,” she insists.
He tilts his head. “Tell that to my neck.”
Euphemia bites her lip and squeezes her hands to fists. “Just…tell me where I’ll find more roseroot before the dream ends.”
That seems to sober him a bit. “Old Man Rayner brought some here when he came to Thorfell. He planted it on the bluff. A yellow flower with—”
“A tall stem. I remember.”
The cracks in the walls deepen and splinter.
Dagfinn watches them as he folds his arms and leans against the wall. But his words are meant for her. “See you on the other side, my True North.”
And then, the dream shatters.