Page 125 of Into the Isle

She furrowed her brow. “What could make me feel unsafe around you, Grim?”

“Me.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I thought we just went through this—how I managed to calm your temper.”

“It may not always be that easy. Next time, please, for the love of all that’s sacred, listen to me and let me go out on my own.”

She didn’t ask why. She didn’t say no. She simply watched me curiously, eyebrow perching on her forehead as she bit the corner of her lip.

I stopped us before we could reach any students ahead—students who I knew would make a big scene given my state of disarray and nudity.

“When I told the story of the raiders coming to slaughter my fathers in the forest, I lied. I did not flee them. I watched. That traumatic event, I believe, was what triggered my first berserk experience. The blind rage, pure hate, and unmitigated violence of it.”

She held her breath, nodding slowly. “O-Okay. What happened, Grim?”

I sighed and stared down into her alarmed eyes. “After the raiders killed my fathers, I went into a battle-lust, tore through the woods, and massacred them all.” My shoulders sank. “Including my biological parents.”

Chapter 36

Ravinica

I WAS GETTING CLOSER to a breakthrough. I could feel it.

I stood over the table late at night, poring over tomes and record books with Magnus, who did his own research and wrote down notes.

Mimir Tomes was unnervingly quiet this time of night. Only a single candle gave the two of us enough light to do our research.

To my right, three books were open. To my left, I had started to sketch out a vast family tree with a pencil. The tree was growing by the day, and now I had two separate pieces of paper taped together to continue it.

I hummed to myself, sifting through a few more pages, until I found another name I’d seen mentioned numerous times. It was one of my great-great-great grandparents on my mother’s side.

Trying to trace the family history of Lindi Foradeen—my mother—through her paternal bloodline had proven fruitless. Ma’s father, Foras Grundan, got me nowhere. I had wasted over a week of nightly meetings in Mimir Tomes trying to grasp a thread that seemingly didn’t exist.

Of course, I didn’t know my father. That side of the family was impossible to trace.

It was only once I started reconciling consensus records on my mom’s mother that I started to get anywhere. And then I fell into a flow, with patterns and histories coming to light that had me excited.

Now, I felt I was reaching the end. I only needed to find information on a few blank names in my hierarchy tree for me to create and understand the wider implications of my family heritage.

Then I will know who was responsible for the horrible things done to my family. I had already registered a few shocking tidbits: a great aunt burned at the stake for being a witch nearly five-hundred years ago; a great grandmother eight generations back who fought in a civil war, was raped, and left for dead.

The tree went back tens of generations. I didn’t need to know everyone—just the people who connected to my mother through biological means.

My journey began before my family had arrived in Iceland and helped build Selby Village. Before that, my mother’s kin had been in Norway. Before Norway, it got a bit hazy, but they’d been there long enough that I didn’t need to go back much further.

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