Page 83 of Into the Isle

“I can already do that, though. Case in point: Astrid Dahlmyrr.”

He grunted, lifted his big hands, and curled them into fists. “These are my greatest strength here. Not magic.”

“Can you Shape?” I asked a few steps later.

“I can get by. Enough to pass trials as an initiate.”

Anxiety rose inside me. The “trials” were the final tests I’d be taking for each class. I still didn’t know what they entailed, and I was worried about that.

How am I ever going to pass a runeshaping trial if I can’t Shape? Granted, I had months to go. But those months would go quickly if I wasn’t focused.

I’ll have to go to someone else to learn about Shaping. Not the studious book-reading part—I’m good at that. The actual doing.

I was disappointed though not surprised. It was a lot to ask of Grim Kollbjorn, a man I hardly knew. He was already my tutor in Combat & Strategy, which he’d pulled just to keep Sven Torfen from being my tutor.

I respected him for that. It said a lot about his character.

We walked abreast. The heat of his large frame washed off him in waves. He was a formidable man, one I felt I could befriend. I saw the way he glanced at me out the corner of his eye when he thought I wasn’t looking. I still need to know if I can trust him.

“Grim,” I said. We’d walked another five minutes without talking. It was easy for us, the companionable silence.

He hummed, low and guttural. “Hmm.”

“Will you tell me what happened last year? With you and the student?”

I stopped walking, hoping he would also. When he kept marching, I sighed and chased after him.

Once I was alongside him again, he said, “Only if you’ll tell me who gave your face that bruise, little sneak.”

I wrinkled my nose. “It’s really not an exciting story.”

“Neither is mine.”

Finally, he stopped walking. The entire forest seemed to settle around him. His amber eyes zeroed in on me, chin dipping so he could take me in.

I felt small in his gaze, yet somehow powerful. Like this man understood me better than anyone else at Vikingrune Academy, despite only knowing me for a day and a half.

Safe. That’s what I felt.

I let out another sigh. “It was my stepfather. He hit me for lashing out under his roof. It was a small thing, and he felt disrespected.”

Grim’s face didn’t move. He didn’t flinch or growl or show any emotion.

His eyes told a different story. I saw the way the amber darkened, calcifying into something menacing. It was a flash of darkness that made my blood run cold.

If I didn’t trust Grim Kollbjorn, intuitively, I would have backpedaled right then and there. Taken everyone’s advice and avoided him, just for that eerie look in his eyes alone.

Yet I stayed strong. Squared my shoulders.

“That’s no small thing,” he said, lips barely moving, as if spitting it out past gritted teeth. “I have half a mind to sail across the oceans and confront your stepfather about the error of his ways.”

“You just said it, Grim. It’s the Old Way. You know that. Hallan Borradan is not my blood father. He has no allegiance to me, and I have none toward him. If anything, he treated me poorly because he saw how much better than his biological son I was. At everything. He despised me for it, only because I think he despised Damon more for being a half-assed lack-wit.”

Grim’s bushy eyebrows lifted. “You’ve thought this over some.”

I rubbed behind my neck, averting my gaze. With a shy laugh, I said, “Yeah, you could say that. It’s okay. I had my Ma, Lindi, who always supported me. And Swordbaron Korvan, who taught me how to fight.”

“A good teacher.”

---