Page 144 of Into the Isle

And now, this. The last few names—a matter of finding out the sons and daughters of these families, writing them down, and creating my Vengeance List.

I read a few lines in the tome under the short inscription about Fell McKordan. Absentmindedly, my finger followed down to his offspring. I wrote a name under Fell’s name on the family tree, keeping my finger jabbed in the tome so I wouldn’t lose my place.

It was only after I had written the name and returned to the tome that I double-took to what I’d written.

Magnus Feldraug.

I blinked. A wave of dizziness washed over me.

“Wait . . . what?” I breathed in a whisper.

No, no, that makes no sense. Something isn’t right here.

On instinct, I looked over my shoulder. Magnus was still sleeping, head lolled back on a few stacked books. Body naked and beautiful. I must have had him on my mind and accidentally written his name down.

I returned to the tome. Spent the next ten minutes backtracking a few generations . . . and came to the same conclusion.

My heart slammed in my chest as I read the name in the tome, and then reconciled it with the name on my hand-written family tree.

Magnus Feldraug, son of Fell McKordan.

My mouth fell open, jaw practically hitting the floor.

In a rush of turning pages and a spinning mind, I moved onto other names still blank on my list.

When I blinked, my eyes were blurry. The text around my fingers in the page darkened from a splotch—a tear, fallen from my cheek unbidden.

I wrote the next name down after reaching the end of the line, the end of the history as it currently stood.

My mouth dropped further.

No, no, no. It can’t be!

Within the next hour, I had completed my research. My study was done, and I had four names to work with.

Magnus Feldraug, descendant of a maid from King Dannon’s court, who gave birth to a lady-in-waiting generations later, and an eventual princess. The maid’s family had been the one to coin the phrase “bog-blood,” referring to my family as its precedent.

Grim Kollbjorn, descendant of a soldier in King Dannon’s service, who became a knight and birthed an entire line of religious warrior-zealots who betrayed the old gods and became the heralds fighting against the “swamp-born stain on the land.” This family alone had burned countless of my ancestors.

Sven Torfen, descendant of a nobleman in King Dannon’s court, an advisor who eventually housed the largest wolf shifter pack in the world, and became paramount in hunting down half-bloods in later years, to cleanse the world of impure runeshapers. They had been closely aligned with the bear shifter zealots.

Arne Gornhodr, descendant of an arms dealer who dealt with King Dannon’s court and helped provide him weapons to fight against the elves in Midgard, and also provided the other families with firepower to eradicate the half-bred people associated with those elves.

I was dumbstruck, looking at the very bottom of my family tree, unable to wrap my mind around it. The realization didn’t dawn on me for minutes, and it shattered my heart in a million fractured pieces and sunk me to the depths of despair.

The people I had come here to learn about and assassinate, for their family’s involvement in the destruction of my bloodline, were the men I had fallen for.

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