Page 158 of Whisper of Nightmares

Now as Euphemia glances over the edge, her stomach twists impossibly tight.

Dagfinn grabs her shoulders and steadies her there. “What if this is the answer? What if this is how we wake you?”

Euphemia glares at him. “By what? Throwing me over the edge?”

“Yes!”

“You’ve gone mad!”

“Think about it,” he says, losing himself to the idea, and damn her twirling heart for not loving the excitement in his voice. “Any time you’ve died in a dream, what’s happened?”

Defiantly, Euphemia’s shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You wake up!” he answers for her. “Every single time. No matter the death. The moment before it can happen, it’s like the mind refuses it or something and you wake up back in bed.”

Euphemia hates that he’s sounding more logical by the second.

But only because it is her they’re talking about tossing into the rocks below..

“Sure, that’s how most dreams work,” she says. “But these dreams are different.”

“Are they?” His hands release her, arms spreading wide as he looks behind them. All around them. “I lost my father so I drank an elixir that I believe would send me to Helheim. For nearly a year, that’s where I thought I’ve been. But then you arrive and tell me I’m safe and sound in Thorfell instead. This place is just a dream.”

Her resolve weakens, but she still has her reservations. “But there are things about this dream that cannot be explained like normal ones.”

“Name one.”

She scoffs and says the most obvious, most glaring of them all. “Like why we’ve found each other here. How two people can have the same dream. That is quite unusual, don’t you think?”

“I disagree.” Dagfinn’s voice softens. “I made this place from my own grief. Then you came to Thorfell, and you were grieving too. You wanted to find your father. And I had made this place for doing just that.”

Something cracks in her chest.

A cold fist squeezes her lungs.

Because if what he’s saying is true, if this is just some regular dream, then…

“Are you saying none of it is real?”

Tenderness seeps into his expression, dousing the mania.

Dagfinn reaches for her, tenderly cupping the side of her face. “No. This is very real. But it is just a dream. The spirit does not have to stay attached to the body—like the hugr who took over mine. Spirits can wander, especially in dreams. Especially those searching for something. I think that’s how you got here. I think you wandered into my dream.”

Euphemia doesn’t know what she believes anymore.

Once, she would have dismissed talk of wandering souls and spirits as heresy.

But she has walked among the dead. She has seen things no living woman should see.

Perhaps anything is possible.

Besides, she likes this possibility he’s conjured. The one where they are drawn together like the moon to the night sky. The one where they faced a giant serpent together, where they fought through creatures made of water and death, and survived. Together.

Slowly, Dagfinn’s thumb begins to trace her cheekbone.

Euphemia glances at his lips, and then back to the sea.

“Are you sure that will work?”