Page 123 of Whisper of Nightmares

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?”

Chapter 24

A Real Remembrance

The ground trembles in time with Euphemia’s pounding heart.

This isn’t the revelation she planned for.

She had thought remembering himself would make everything right again. That he would be liberated. Overjoyed. Grateful, even.

She had not anticipated suspicion.

Of course he would be, though. This poor man—her poor husband—has been trapped inside a nightmare for nearly a year. He’s had to fight monsters and survive all on his own. It’s no wonder his reaction to uncovering the truth would also involve a healthy amount of wariness.

Euphemia only curses herself for not anticipating it.

But, she spins the cogs in her mind quickly.

She cannot tell him everything yet, not unless she wants the dream to end. And she doesn’t. Not yet. Not with him looking at her with so much distrust.

She can earn it back though.

Tell him something true. If only part of it.

“I believe I’m helping your mother.”

“My mother?” A flash of remembrance sparks in his eyes. But it’s overgrown by a bramble of confusion. “How do you know her?”

Euphemia worries at the inside of her mouth. “She hired me. I’ve been helping her tend to the manor.”

“I thought you said you ran a tavern.”

“I-I did. It wasn’t enough though. My family needed more. And now that my father…” Euphemia swallows the lump that always rises to her throat when she mentions him.

Dagfinn holds her gaze with no sympathy though. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know until tonight. After the first tremor, the manor started to look familiar, and then it struck me. This is the manor where I—” She chokes back the word live. “—where I work. And then everything sort of came to me. She has an ill son. You have been trapped here.”