Page 38 of Threadbound

He didn’t know whatthiswas going to entail, and he had no idea how he was going to manage to get himself into his attic room in this state, anyway. He’d seen other people sleeping in some of the greenspaces around the city, so he supposed one more person in a corner of the Kirkyard or on a park bench wouldn’t attract much notice, although he didn’t like the idea of being so exposed.

A warm hand closed around his. Jamie’s. “The doctor is just going to put a cast on your arm,” Jamie told him gently. “Nothing more.”

A cast. Bran nervously looked at the cart.

“Plaster or fiberglass?” Jamie asked the woman.

“Fiberglass. Nothing but the best for our patient,” she answered, winking at him.

“What does he have to do to take care of it?”

The woman placed some of the strips of material into the basin of water. “Once it’s dry, he’ll be able to sleep in it, shower in it, do pretty much anything he needs to. Although,” she continued, her tone turning lighter, “I wouldn’t recommend trying to take up rugby any time soon.”

Jamie laughed, but Bran couldn’t force himself to appreciate whatever was supposed to be funny about her statement becauseshe was reaching out towards him. He pressed himself back, his breath coming faster.

Taranis-cursed cowardice.

Jamie’s fingers tightened around his hand. “It’ll be okay,” he said softly. “It’s sometimes a little warm as it dries, but it will keep your arm protected while it heals. Okay?”

Bran forced himself to meet Jamie’s so-blue eyes, then nodded.

Jamie smiled at the woman. “Let’s do this.”

She smiled back, then gently took Bran’s arm, undoing the splint and drawing a hiss from him as her fingers probed his tender flesh.

“Sorry about that. There will be a little more as I get it all strapped in, but nothing like when we had to reset it. I promise.” She winked at him.

She thought he was worried about pain. If he hadn’t been mere breaths from panic, Bran might have found that amusing. Pain didn’t frighten him. He didn’t like it, but he could tolerate it.

It was doctors and hospitals he hated. And, if he were being completely honest, himself.

But, even though he was looking for it, he didn’t see condemnation or derision on Jamie’s open, kind face. Exhaustion, yes. And what Bran thought was worry. But no indication that he thought less of Bran because of his childish fears.

It wasn’t helping Bran to walk away from him in the slightest. If anything, Jamie sitting here, at his bedside, was only making Bran want to cling to the half-breed even more.

But to do so would mean taking Jamie away from everything. His life. His studies, which he loved so much. His work and his friend Trixie.

And what would they be replaced with?

A world that would be so utterly alien to him that Jamie would, Bran had no doubt, think he’d lost his mind. Perhaps strange enough that he mightactuallylose his mind. Bran had heard such rumors before—that humans brought through the Gates simply could not understand, could not accept, that magic and all the legends they had rejected from childhood tales were real. They would shut down, cease to speak. Or run screaming into the unforgiving and dangerous wilderness of Elfhame, never to be seen again.

Bran could not inflict such an end on Jamie, even if it meant the loss of his own mind.

Especially now.

Because now he understood that while Jamie might not possess magic, might not understand the layers of the realms and the winding threads of Fate, he belonged in the world. He made it a better, kinder, and more forgiving place, and Bran did not dare tarnish it by risking Jamie’s removal from it.

But he so very much wanted to.

Chapter

Eighteen

The sun was rising over the roofs of Edinburgh as Jamie tucked one of his mother’s crocheted afghan blankets around Bran, whose deep green eyes were already falling closed. When Jamie had asked him if he had anywhere to go, the smaller man’s cheeks had flushed and he’d stammered something semi-incoherent, which Jamie had taken to mean that he was both exhausted and didn’t have anywhere to go. Nowhere safe, anyway.

So Bran was now tucked in, curled up on his uninjured side, in Jamie’s bed, and Jamie was trying to decide whether a gallon of coffee or trying to sleep in his chair or on the floor was a better idea.

Technically, he’d fit on the bed beside Bran, but that felt awfully personal. They’d been on a date and a half, and Jamie still wasn’t entirely certain how Bran felt about him. To be fair, he also wasn’t sure how he felt about Bran, so sleeping in the same bed felt like a little much.

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