Page 36 of Whisper of Nightmares

“But… I am his wife.”

“I do not care who you are.” A muscle in Kelda’s jaw twitches as if it is taking great restraint from her not to tackle Euphemia again. “Only I tend to him. Understood?”

Obedience seeps from her pores, and Euphemia finds herself nodding vigorously.

From where she stands, she can still see Dagfinn from over the top of Kelda’s head. But he is nothing more than a long body shrouded in wolf pelts, his red hair splayed across the thin pillows.

She longs to see his face.

Longs to know the man she has wed.

“What is his curse?” she asks, the word like bile on her tongue.

Kelda is silent for a moment. Her shoulders bob with indifference but there is a wince in her expression. “Dagfinn has not woken in almost a year.”

“A year?”

Euphemia doesn’t know what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t that.

She stares harder at the bed, eyes scanning for that steady rise and fall of a chest that signals life. At this point, she wouldn’t put it past Kelda to trick her into marrying a dead man. But then she sees the subtle movement of his ribs. Thank God he is alive.

But what life is he living is he’s condemned to sleep?

A shudder shakes the base of her skull. Euphemia can think of no worse fate than being trapped in her dreams.

But the pity she feels quickly warps into anger.

Indignation.

Injustice.

“You let me marry a cursed man,” Euphemia growls at the woman, momentarily forgetting she had just recently had her pinned against the wall. Maybe she doesn’t care. Maybe she wants the physical altercation again. Wants to strike her in return the way she had struck Thurstan. Because this woman is just as infuriating. She lied to her. Pretended she was doing Euphemia a favor, when in reality she entangled her in a curse she never would have wanted.

“You tricked me.”

With a roll of her cold eyes, Kelda grabs Euphemia by the arm, drags her out of the room, and slams the door shut behind them.

“It was no trick,” Kelda snarls, reaching for the key. “You married him of your own accord.”

“I may have, but I did not know he was cursed! You never told me⁠—”

“You never asked.”

The words bite out of Kelda as she twists the key in the lock and shoves it back into her pocket. Retrieving the candelabrum from where she had set it on the ground, the two of them stand there, staring each other down like vipers ready to strike.

Euphemia’s mouth pops open, an argument primed on her lips.

But in the dark confines of the stairwell, all her bluster is lost.

Besides, Kelda is right. Euphemia had known this agreement was too good to be true. She might not have known the specifics, but she had felt it the moment Kelda crossed her path. Something had been off about her. And yet, Euphemia had accepted the offer anyway.

Truthfully, she isn’t sure that knowing about his curse would’ve changed anything.

She needed an escape. This arrangement provided one.

The only difference is that now it’s not as easy of a fix for her own curse as she originally thought it might be.

When Euphemia clamps her mouth shut, Kelda pushes past her and begins descending the tower.