Page 17 of Threadbound

The half-breed was back at the library, and Bran was back in his tree, huddled into his own feathers and pressed tight against the tree’s trunk to try to avoid the rain that was pouring down out of the sky. It was only partly working. He shook himself, casting water droplets away from his feathers, although he knew that in the next ten minutes he was going to be just as wet again.

The half-breed—Jamie, Bran reminded himself, although he couldn’t decide if he liked knowing the half-human’s name, since it made it harder to be irritated at his existence when he had a name and a personality—had looked unhappy and uncomfortable as he’d trudged through the rain toward the library, his bag over his back and his shoulders hunched up in a soaked jacket that didn’t look like it was doing much to keep out the rain.

It bothered Bran that Jamie had looked out of sorts, and it bothered him even more that it bothered him. A week ago, he might not even have noticed Jamie’s state of mind, and he certainly wouldn’t have been upset by it if he had.

But it turned out that Jamie wasn’t even half as stupid as Bran had originally thought.

And when he’d started talking about medicine and history, those dark blue eyes had lit up like spunkies in the nighttime shadows, sparks gleaming within their depths.

Lugh damn him.

Bran really hated being wrong.

And he was starting to think he might have severely misjudged the half-breed.

He was fairly certain Jamie had no magic—there had been no indication that he’d had any particular abilities, either innate or crafted. Bran himself had innate magic. Yes, he could spin and weave spells, but most of his magic—when it was working, anyway—was simply a part of him. It surged when he needed it and ebbed when he didn’t.Or, he thought irritably, shaking the water once more from his feathers,it makes me shiver in the heat and feverish in the cold.

Most of the higher fae—which Bran was—had both abilities. The lesser fae typically only had one. The doonie could shape-shift, but were otherwise powerless, where powries laid magical traps to capture their prey—usually animals, but Bran knew they weren’t above trapping the occasional tourist or lost hiker who wandered too close to the thin places between Elfhame and Dunehame in their territory.

Jamie certainly didn’t feel like he had any intrinsic magic, and—even with Bran’s own magic acting unpredictably—Bran could sense magic, especially in Dunehame, where practically everything was boringly mundane. He supposed it was possible that Jamie had a crafting ability, but he certainly hadn’t seen any indication of it. Although how, exactly, he would have seen Jamie craft anything while giving a museum tour, he wasn’t sure.

Bran fluffed his feathers again, resigning himself at the same time to the fact that the water was eventually going to get downto his skin, since the weather showed no indication that it was going to give up any time soon.

The biggest difficulty about discovering that the half-breed wasn’t horrid was that now Bran had to seriously consider the possibility of completing the threadbond. Which meant he had to think about the fact that it could only happen in one of two ways.

First, and probably the most common, he would have to kidnap the half-breed and drag him to Elfhame. Most fae would have used trickery of some sort—glamour, perhaps, or a trap spell near a gate. Except Bran’s magic was unreliable enough that the kind of perfect timing those sorts of tricks took might not work out in his favor. After all, if the glamour slipped or the trap didn’t activate, he’d miss the opportunity and likely scare the half-breed away.

Using raw brute force wasn’t really Bran’s style—for one thing, Jamie was fairly large, and while Bran was stronger than the average human, he was still bound by the basic law of physics that it was very difficult to carry a person who was significantly larger than himself. Jamie’s extra-long arms and legs would almost certainly make the challenge of hauling him through the Gate even harder—to say nothing of getting himtothe Gate in the first place.

The only thing Bran had going for him was that the half-breed liked dead things, so getting him to the Greyfriars cemetery shouldn’t be a big problem.

The other alternative—aside from force or trickery—was to tell him the truth and convince him to travel willingly to Elfhame.

A part of Bran wished that Jamie was as stupid as he’d originally thought. It would have made him feel a lot less guilty about contemplating abduction, for one thing. And a stupider man might have been more likely to fall for a trick. And amore superstitious one might have been more likely to believe in magic—but a man of science, in Bran’s experience, would be difficult to convince of the supernatural truth.

Lugh damn it all.

It wasdark by the time the half-breed came back out, and Bran was thoroughly soaked through, chilled and shivering despite the warmth of the air surrounding him. The rain was only half the problem—his magic had been surging and crashing all day, and Bran felt both hungry and nauseous at the same time.

But he hadn’t wanted to leave the tree in case he might miss Jamie leaving the library.

Now he was regretting not flying off somewhere with a Dunatis-blessed roof. Particularly because he wasn’t at all confident about his ability to actually find himself dinner in the dark and the rain.

But the half-breed appeared to be heading back to his apartment, so Bran followed.

Across a narrow alley from the tiny apartment building were a handful of trees—but, more importantly, there was a narrow attic with a widow that had broken, but that no one had noticed or bothered to fix. It meant shelter from the elements and some hint of warmth in the winter months, as well as a place for Bran to hide a handful of things that he could use to spin himself additional comforts. A scrap of heavier fabric to create a blanket. A few more to make clothes. A coin to spin so that he could buy food.

The broken pane had been large enough to admit him access in raven form, but if he pushed open the whole pane, his slight human body could climb out onto the pitched roof. From there, it was a matter of care, but he could make his way across therooftops to where other buildings with lower roofs or entryways would let him make his way back down to the ground.

Assisted a bit by magic, of course.

Bran wasn’t stupid enough to try dropping a full story onto pavement without slowing his fall. He also couldn’t jump high enough to grasp the edge of the roof without using a little wind magic.

He was dreading the day his magic wouldn’t help him, leaving him stranded in the odd back alley behind the series of buildings. At least it was mostly empty at night, which meant that once the half-breed returned home, Bran could go out and find himself food.

It wasn’t a comfortable existence, and it was one of many things he’d resented the half-breed for, despite the fact that Bran knew full well the man had nothing to do with his choice to squat in an attic rather than assume a more fully human guise. He knew others of his kind, fae with business in Dunehame, embraced the human style of living more fully. Some had done so for generations—pretending to be their own children over successive decades, starting companies, investing coin until it became a fortune.

Bran had neither the time nor the inclination to do such a thing. His magic would leave him before he would be able to amass anything resembling a fortune, for one thing. And for another, he had no interest in masquerading a human life and did not understand those who did.

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