Page 106 of Threadbound

Eating it—if you didn’t know exactly what you were doing—was suicidal.

“What do you use it with, to raise the dead?” Jamie asked, crouching down to examine the plant more closely, careful not to touch it as he pushed aside some other leaves.

Bran bit back the urge to tell him not to touchanythingin the Nimh Coille, but what Jamie was touching at that precise moment wasn’t going to hurt him. “Grave dirt, a wraith’s saliva, air from the lungs of the dying.”

Jamie looked up at him, his brow furrowed. “How do you mix it withair?”

Bran smiled a little, unable to help himself. “Verra carefully and with magic.”

Jamie seemed to think about this. “Then what do you do with it?” he asked. “Smear it on something?”

“You steep it in yew-berry wine.”

“Yew-berrywine? Aren’t yew-berries poisonous?” Jamie sounded alarmed.

“The seeds are, but the fruit itself is safe.”

“Huh.”

“I wouldna try to eat them, though. If you swallow a cracked seed… well, it willna be pleasant. You’ll survive if you’re lucky and dinna eat too many. Probably.”

“No yew-berries. Got it.” Jamie studied theanail an duine mhairbhfor another minute or two. “But you make it into wine?”

“Only for rituals and spells. It’s verra time-consuming.”

“And potentially deadly if you miss a seed.”

“That is why it’s verra time-consuming.”

Jamie’s lips quirked, and Bran couldn’t help the answering tilt of his own in response. Then Jamie’s eyes narrowed. “How did you dothatat the last minute?” Jamie asked, searching Bran’s features.

Bran let out a long breath. “I dinna,” he replied. “I had it with me.” His brow furrowed again. “In the event that it became… necessary.”

“Because of the war?” Jamie’s question was soft.

“Aye. Although we werna quite certain if it yet was war.”

“I suppose that was your answer,” the half-breed murmured.

“Aye,” Bran confirmed.

Then Jamie looked back at the plant. “Do you think I could…” He let the question trail off.

“Aye, but we’ll have to go back to the Court for the proper tools so you don’t burn off your skin.”

The look Jamie turned on him made Bran want to do just about anything the man asked. “Really?”

He didn’t want to, but he found himself unable to say no to Jamie. “Aye.”

Chapter

Thirty-Nine

Jamie had been allowed in what he’d come to think of as Bran’s lab—although Bran referred to it as his workshop. There had been any number of books that Jamie’s fingers itched to explore, but he’d asked politely for anything more on theanail an duine mhairbhand what it could do. Bran had obliged, even trying to help, although neither of them had been able to find the recipe Jamie remembered.

Jamie was sitting at the heavy wooden table, the base dug into the ground as though the piece of furniture had been grown out of a living tree—which, for all Jamie knew, it had—staring into the flickering flames of a fire, trying to summon up anything that would be useful. He was absently doodling on the paper beside him, his hand automatically sketching out the lines of the other plants illustrated in the manuscript.

“Are these also in the recipe?” Bran’s voice asked from behind him, making Jamie jump a little.

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