Page 138 of Threadbound

But for tonight, they could go back to their tiny hotel room—they might still need bog myrtle, and holly and yew if they could find them, but those they didn’t have to collect under a full moon, so they could wait until morning when they were less likely to either freeze to death or break their necks.

Rob passed around a flask with whisky as they turned and trudged back, trying to keep their insides warm even if the outsides were mostly numb.

Jamie feltlike his fingers and toes were still cold from the night before, but they were back out in Cairngorms, fortifiedwith thermoses of coffee that they’d splurged and gotten from the ranger’s office slightly later than they’d planned. Trixie and Rob were both grumpy from lack of sleep, and Bran was clearly agitated that they hadn’t yet found what they needed. Of course,Branhad been perfectly happy to trudge about through the snow at night, given his nocturnal tendencies, even if the rest of them had desperately just wanted warm beds.

Trixie was stuffing a few yew branches into a bag, her mittens making that more difficult than it should have been. They were hiking out to one of the lochs dotting the preserve to try to make contact with an ashray. According to Bran, ashrays were twilight creatures, which meant that they were aiming to reach the loch around three in the afternoon—with sunset at half-past, that would put them at the loch at the time when ashrays were most likely to be active.

Assuming there were ashrays in this particular loch at all.

Bran had chosen it because it was a ways away from any of the marked or known trails, and ashrays didn’t really like people—at least, they didn’t like being around people. Jamie was trying not to think about some of the stories he’d read about water-spirits or water-demonseatingpeople. He wasn’t sure those fae were even the same as ashrays, but he didn’t want to ask and find out they were the hard way.

“Right-o,” Trixie announced, swinging her now-bulging bag around her back. “That one down.”

Just holly, bog myrtle, and ashray gold.

“These ashray things,” Rob said. “They don’t live in your world?”

“They do,” Bran replied, “but they’re much more rare than they are here in Dunehame.”

“Why?” Jamie asked.

Bran shrugged. “Honestly, I dinna know.”

“So then how do we know there’s going to be one in this loch?” Rob asked. Jamie would have seconded the question, but he didn’t want to encourage Rob’s complaining. Rob wasn’t usually even half as surly as he’d been this whole trip—but it was his car, so Jamie wasn’t going to ask him to stop, since they needed him. But he could tell Rob was irritating Bran, and even Trixie was pursing her lips every time Rob muttered something, either above or under his breath.

“We dinnaknow,” Bran replied in a clipped tone. “But if there is an ashray in the Cairngorms, this would be where it is.”

“But we don’t know that,” Rob grumbled.

“No,” Bran agreed, anger cutting through the words and making Jamie very nervous. “We dinna know that. We also dinna know if any of us is going to drop dead in the next five paces, either.”

Rob stopped complaining for the next hour.

So did everybody else. In fact, no one said a word, which was putting Jamie even more on edge. He wanted his friends to get along with Bran, and vice versa. He wanted them to be able to hang out together, to become friends with each other. The more time they spent slogging their way across frozen moors, the less likely that seemed to be a realistic outcome. At this rate, Jamie would take it as a success if Rob and Bran didn’t kill each other before they managed to get everything they needed. Well. If Bran didn’t kill Rob. Jamie was under no illusions about which of them would end up wining a fight if it came down to it. Rob might be a big guy, but Bran had magic and fewer scruples about violence.

He didn’twantBran to fight Rob, and he didn’t want Rob to irritate Bran to the point where the fae lost his temper. But Jamie also wasn’t sure how to mitigate Rob’s impatience with Bran’s tolerance. Trixie seemed to be equally aware of the brewing tensions, and equally willing to try to defuse thesituation, for which Jamie was grateful—but if this took too many more days, Jamie wasn’t sure if any of them would forgive him.

Jamie was watching his footing as they rounded a rocky corner at the top of a crag, so he didn’t see the loch until he looked up, breath coming heavy in the cold.

“Oh, damn,” Rob breathed behind him, but this time he sounded awed instead of annoyed. The sun was low, and the sky was just starting to pick up swaths of pale color, and the still-unfrozen water of the loch reflected that color back, rippled and edged by the ice around the shoreline. It was breathtakingly, heart-achingly beautiful.

Trixie pulled out her phone and took a handful of pictures. Jamie didn’t blame her one bit.

“Send me your favorite?” he asked her, and she nodded. Trixie was a good photographer—Jamie and technology didn’t really get along all that well, and what he saw with his eyes could never be captured the way he wanted it to be. Trixie’s photos were always much better.

Then Jamie felt guilty again, because he’d gotten distracted from what they were there to do. Bran’s father was dying—this wasn’t a fun hiking trip to marvel at the beauty of nature. This was a serious and possibly even dangerous attempt to negotiate with a mystical creature that they had to find in a frigid and fairly inhospitable frozen moor.

Jamie frowned down at his feet as he followed Trixie down the path, and he twitched when Bran bumped his shoulder. “It is beautiful,” the fae said softly.

Jamie blinked at him. “Yeah,” he agreed.

“It’s good to appreciate beauty in the world,” Bran continued, his voice gentle and low. “Whenever it appears.”

Jamie swallowed. “I guess,” he replied, uncertain what Bran was trying to communicate.

“Dinna feel guilty for seeing beauty,” Bran told him.

Jamie felt his face flush. “I?—”

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