Page 146 of Into the Isle

I wanted to go back to an hour ago, when I’d had Magnus inside me and his boot on my face while I licked wine off the ground. That despicable, filthy, perfect time, when we could both forget the tortures of our lives and just be in the moment, one with each other.

In the end, I folded the pages of my family tree together and stuffed them in my shirt. Everything else, including my notes, I had to leave behind, as the boots from the first level of Mimir Tomes were growing louder, moving to the second level.

The Huscarls were making their rounds.

Magnus and I hurried out the window together, climbing down at a measured pace. Magnus went second and made sure to close the window behind us. We were leaving enough evidence behind that our secret spot had been burned.

It didn’t matter. We had made our discoveries.

And truth be told, just like that, I never wanted to step foot into Mimir Tomes again.

Over the next few days, I was adrift. I had two midterms to finish to close out the week—a written test for Hersir Thorvi’s History & Tomes class, and another one for Hersir Kelvar’s Stealth & Interrogation class.

Both of them I drifted through, acing them without needing to try. I was good at scholarly pursuits, and I’d hardly needed to study.

Randi and Dagny noticed my lethargy and tried to pry answers out of me for why I was being so dour, but I gave them nothing. As the weekend hit, they stopped asking, only looking at me sadly when I passed, as if I was a shell of my former self.

I couldn’t fight off the bleakness that overcame me. The truth of my time here was barreling toward me at a breakneck speed, and nothing I did—no extracurricular gallivanting with Grim in the woods or Magnus in the library—would change it.

My mission was still the same.

Now I just needed to figure out a way to execute it.

Over those days, the doubts weighed me down. I was listless and dismayed, and there was no one I could talk to without outing myself. I didn’t want to put my friends in danger by telling them I had been moonlighting as a research-assassin in the forbidden section of Mimir Tomes.

Dagny knew a little bit about it, after I’d given her the Snorri poetry book, yet that was all. She knew no details. Not even my mother knows what I’ve discovered here.

I wondered, vaguely, if telling Ma about what I’d found, and the resentments and difficulties holding me back—falling for the men I was supposed to kill—would sway her mind at all.

That cycle of thoughts only brought me to another one, where I debated the necessity and rightness of carrying out Lindi’s mission at all.

Family was everything, of course. I loved my mother, and I hated being chastised and tormented by the people of Selby Village, by the students and staff at Vikingrune Academy—by every Viking-born supernatural I seemed to come across. They all hated me because of my name.

At the same time, did I care as much as my mother? She saw retribution and vengeance as the only way out—the only way to vindicate our family’s struggles.

I was starting to doubt that was the case.

It made me feel weak even considering going back on my oath to her.

Into the weekend, I kept floating by, dissociating. I felt like I was on the outside looking in. Unsure what to do or where to go or who to talk to.

Obviously it couldn’t be any of the four men in question. “Hey, Grim, I’ve discovered your family bloodline hated mine and did everything in their power to eradicate us. Funny, huh? Now I’m supposed to kill you. Thoughts?”

Yeah, that would go well.

It wasn’t until Saturday after midterms, when countless other students were celebrating in Delaveer Forest outside the academy and inside the walls of the school, that I finally got a wake-up call.

Something snapped me out of it.

The night began with me retreating to Nottdeen Quarter after a lonely supper at the nearby mess hall. Dagny was behind the counter, looking pensively at me when I shuffled toward the stairs.

“Rav,” she called out when I put my hand on the railing.

I paused, my sad eyes facing her.

She frowned at me and grabbed a piece of paper from the table, wagging it in the air. “You got a letter from a messenger raven. Came in this afternoon.”

Furrowing my brow, questions spiraling in my brain as I hurried over to her. I took the letter from Dagny, muttered, “Thanks,” and peeled it open at the counter.

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