Mark of Love (Love Mark #3) - Linda Kage Page 0,63

through the eight kingdoms that made up our world, I found places he’d marked that I’d never even heard of before, places probably only the locals in that area knew the name of.

Thinking this might come in handy someday, I tore the map from the book, glancing up when I heard a choked sound of protest sputter from the other side of the camp. The High Clifter gaped at me as if I’d just stabbed him through the heart. Rolling my eyes, I refolded the map and tucked it into a side pouch of my own pack. He really did hold his book in high regard, didn’t he?

“That…” He shook his head, eyes full of torment. “That was just cruel.”

I shrugged and opened the first page. The graphed genealogy I found there made my eyebrows spike. It wasn’t for House Moast that he claimed to belong to, though. No, it was a Graykey family tree.

Interesting.

I glanced at him again. But he had his eyes closed this time. With his head tipped back, he rested it against the tree behind him and clasped his hands tightly in his lap. One might confuse him for praying, save for how pale he was as he tapped his toe anxiously against the ground.

I returned my attention to the family tree, finding my own name almost immediately. He even knew which year I’d been born. When I found an asterisk mark beside it, I frowned, curious to know what that meant. Discovering more similar marks beside the names Taika, Melaina, Questa, Quailen, and a couple more, however, I began to get a suspicion over what they stood for.

I turned the page, and my stomach plummeted.

He’d listed each family member by name and written everything he’d learned about them, including birth year, what atrocities they’d done in their lifetime—names of individuals they had murdered, items they’d stolen, people they’d tricked—and how they had died.

Then I came to a page full of another list of names. This list was titled Unknowns, and it had the asterisk mark next to it, making me think it was connected to the asterisks next to the names on the family tree.

The first name on the list was Qualmer, my first cousin and Melaina’s second son—the one she had stabbed in the eye and not taken on our big escape. Apparently, he’d gone missing from everyone’s radar six years ago without a trace at the end of the Great Lowden War. Under that bit of news was another indented list of all the people he was accused of killing. When I spotted the names Edgar and Emlett Moast among them, I paused.

Moast, huh?

There was no mention of how they were no doubt related to the man who owned this journal; it merely said the two were High Cliff emissaries who’d been in Lowden in the year three-ten, which was when the tenth reaping had occurred.

I lifted my face, but the High Clifter across the campfire was still restlessly tapping his knee with his eyes closed. A thin trail of sweat swept down his temple. My jaw tensed. And I knew he felt my rising ire because he heaved in a deep breath.

I went back to reading.

Number two on the list was Quo Graykey. I remembered him. He’d been a second cousin—I think—and grandson to Grandpa Obediah’s brother, King Orick. He’d been a direct heir of the Graykey crown. But his name had been marked out with an update written to the side, claiming he’d been found six years ago.

Becoming suspicious, I flipped back to the family tree and discovered that he’d been marked as dead on that page the very same year he was marked as found on this list.

Only one other person on the list had a line marked through their name—my first cousin, Quart, who’d been Aunt Taiki and Uncle Palmer’s oldest son. He also had a side note saying he’d been found the same year the family tree claimed he died. Everyone else on the list either had a question mark as their death year or parenthesis around the year they went missing.

Realizing what I was looking at, I ran my finger down the list until I found my own name. Digit trembling, I read the notes that had been written about me.

Quilla Graykey. Born in 302. Disappeared in 310. Sibling of Quesen, child of Preston. Abilities: Compels movement and thought from people and things. Update in 323 – New information confirms she attended the Ladies Academy of Warren