Page 57 of Threadbound

For that, Bran didn’t have an answer. He shrugged thin shoulders. There were half a dozen reasons—that Jamie might not believe him, that Jamie might resent having his life taken over, that it was probably already too late to save his magic, that Jamie would be terrified of Elfhame and the creatures in it, that Bran already owed Jamie too much to ask him for yet another gift, but the one that caused Bran the most dread was the idea that Jamie simply wouldn’t want anything to do with him, specifically. While Jamie wanting to stay in Dunehame, to live his life, to not be involved in fae magic… all those were real reasons why the half-breed would refuse the threadbond, andBran understood and accepted all of them. But his heart had already decided—without any consultation with his Lugh-addled brain—that it wanted Jamie, and if Jamie didn’t want it back…

Bran understood that it was unlikely Jamie felt anything more than a sense of obligation. Maybe he’d enjoyed their conversations, and maybe he wouldn’t mind being Bran’s occasional dinner companion or even, eventually, friend, but that wasn’t what Bran’s heart ached for, despite his better judgment.

And he wasn’t certain he could stand a threadbond that wasn’t more. So even if Jamie agreed to it, Bran didn’t know if he was willing to endure a bond with a man he cared for who didn’t share those same feelings.

It was all hypothetical, anyway. Jamie was in Dunehame and knew nothing of the threadbond, and Bran had no intention of telling him, regardless of what his father thought about it.

Because Bran knew that if he did, Jamie would almost certainly agree to it just to help Bran.

And that was the last thing Bran wanted.

He already owed Jamie his life. Twice over. A third time was unthinkable.

Chapter

Twenty-Three

Jamie had spent the better part of the last two weeks trying to bury himself in the library. The heat wave that had made his apartment insufferably stuffy had broken, but Jamie nevertheless couldn’t stand to spend too many hours there awake.

Every time he turned around, he expected to see Bran, even though he knew it was stupid.

Bran had gone back to—wherever he’d come from. Fairyland. He might as well never have existed.

For a few days, Jamie had seriously wondered if Bran even existed at all, but when he’d finally gone back to work, Trixie had asked about Bran—and if Jamie’s disappearance had anything to do with him. Jamie told her that he’d taken Bran home and hadn’t heard anything since, which was true enough, he supposed. He’d taken Bran to the magic tree in the Greyfriars Kirkyard, and Bran had… gone through it.

Jamie wasn’t stupid enough to saythatto Trixie, though. If she didn’t drag him by the ear into Student Counselling Services or the closest Emergency Department, she’d definitely wonder if he’d had some sort of drug-induced hallucination.

But she’d met Bran. Talked to him. Remembered him.

That told Jamie that Bran had been real.

It didn’t exactly tell him whether or not Bran had really turned into a bird and then somehow traveled through a tree in a churchyard, but at least he wasn’t entirely a figment of Jamie’s imagination.

Jamie hadn’t much liked the fact that he’d had to lie to Trixie and Rob about what had happened, though. He’d gone with something approximating the truth—he’d found Bran beaten and bloody, had taken him to the hospital, and then taken care of him until he was able to tell Jamie where home was.

None of it was a lie… exactly. It just omitted a few important bits.

Like the fight Jamie’d had with Bran’s attackers. The aches and pains that had finally faded told him that they had been real enough. At least all of those had been hidden under his clothes so he hadn’t had to explainthatto Trixie.

And he’d neglected to mention that it wasn’t some random mugging, but a specifically targeted attack, and that he might still be in danger.

And the whole Bran-turning-into-a-raven and disappearing-into-a-magic-tree thing.

Jamie also knew that Rob and Trixie knew he was hiding something.

Trixie assumed it was something romantic that had happened between Jamie and Bran that Jamie didn’t want to talk about. Maybe a lovers’ quarrel. Rob—who, as it turns out, was the more suspicious of the two—had asked Jamie quietly once if Bran had hurt him or tried to. Jamie had told him of course not, but it hadn’t looked like Rob was entirely convinced.

But convincing Trixie and Rob that he wasn’t involved in some sort of toxic relationship with a stalker, ex-stalker, or manipulative asshole wasn’t the worst of Jamie’s problems. He also had to worry about the three attackers. Was it a bad idea forhim to keep running the crags? He’d definitely been intentional about making sure he started and finished his runs in daylight, and he’d found himself repeatedly checking behind him when he did have to go out at night—on his way home from the library, after walking Trixie home, with groceries when he’d gotten home to find a lack of food in his apartment.

Jamie had also gone back to leaving out a small dish of milk and honey, even though Bran had told him that fairies—no, boogas? Bookas? Jamie thought it was bookas—didn’t come into the city proper. Maybe they didn’t, but maybe there was one rogue booka who would find it and be grateful. Or maybe just an un-fussy cat that didn’t care if there was honey in the milk.

He had started leaving it on the sill of the other window—the one that faced the back of the property where there were at least trees and shadows—instead of the one in the kitchen that looked out over Nicolson Street. Maybe if there was a lost booka somewhere in the city, it would be more likely to find the milk there than on the main street.

Jamie couldn’t decide if he was reverting to the things that had brought him comfort as a child, or if he was finding some sort of weird new faith now that he knew—or at least was pretty sure he knew—that fairies—fae—were real.

But if he thought about that too hard, it caused all sorts of emotional and existential crises—about the fact that magic was real, the fact thatfairieswere real, and the fact that even though Bran wasn’t human (probably), Jamie was pretty sure he had inexplicable feelings for him.

So instead, Jamie had thrown himself into his research, determined to at least be productive at one thing.

---