Page 108 of Whisper of Nightmares

And Euphemia realizes then that Kelda doesn’t keep him sequestered because of control or fear. It isn’t for the sake of secrecy either.

It’s all for modesty.

Human decency.

So that when he comes to, she can reassure him that no one saw him at his most vulnerable.

Euphemia moves slowly around the fire, stacking a few logs atop the crumbling embers. Even as the flames catch, she busies herself. Pokes the coals with the wrought-iron rod. Keeps her back turned.

“Good,” Kelda says after she’s tossed the contents of the bedpan out the window and finished washing Dagfinn’s body. “Now, come. Help me change the linens.”

This will be the first time she’s actually laid eyes on her husband.

Euphemia spins around with eagerness at first.

But that same thought also makes her feet still. Makes her chest ache with something she knows is treacherous.

Her gait slows as she approaches.

The burning candles and bushels of lavender Kelda has arranged around the bed posts do little to soothe her nerves.

Euphemia braces herself for the worst. For atrophied muscles and bedsores. For urine stains, unkempt toenails, and a sickly pallor that will surely churn her stomach.

She tells herself that no matter what he looks like, she is not to react. Not in front of his grieving mother.

Approaching Dagfinn’s bedside, Euphemia sucks in a shallow breath.

She forces her gaze upon him and⁠—

The tension eases from her chest.

He is beautiful.

Dagfinn’s complexion, although pale, is not the mawkish green of the ill or dying. It is more like the glow of the morning sun as it crests over the horizon. Even his hair is as vibrant as an autumn’s harvest, his locks healthy and luminous instead of matted and dull as she would have expected after being bedridden for months. Most surprising of all, perhaps, is that he is not a bag of bones rotting away in a bed. His shoulders are as broad as a ship’s bow, his body long and powerful beneath the sheets.

Once she lays her eyes upon him, she cannot tear them away.

This man—her husband—is attractive in a way that feels almost cruel. Striking and harsh, like the storms that plague these lands.

“It is astonishing, isn’t it?” Kelda asks from across the bed.

Euphemia’s cheeks tinge with embarrassment for being caught staring. But Kelda isn’t even watching her. She simply stares down at her son, her voice as ragged as a storm.

“You wouldn’t know it at all by looking at him that he’s been like this for months. He just looks…normal. Like himself. Like he might open those eyes of his and shout, tricked you, any moment now, and we could all go back to the way things were.”

Kelda’s shoulders shudder with her next breath.

If she was closer, Euphemia would reach out and place a comforting hand on her shoulder, though she doubts Kelda would allow it.

Instead she asks, “Are you any closer to knowing what happened to him, or how to undo it?”

Kelda motions to the blankets and together they draw them back, revealing Dagfinn’s bare legs beneath his long tunic. “Some days I think I am. Then I try something else to cure him and I realize I’m nowhere closer than when I started.”

Once the blankets are removed, Kelda lifts Dagfinn onto his side.

With haste and without instruction, Euphemia starts dismantling the sheets from beneath him. She tosses them in a pile on the floor to be retrieved later.

“What all have you tried?” she asks.