Page 61 of Threadbound

Bran sighed. His life had been much simpler asNeach-Cogaidh, sworn to protect the Court of Shades, sworn to obey his father and his father’s guard, including his own elder siblings.

But it was clear to Bran that his days asNeach-Cogaidhwere over. Even if he managed to salvage his magic, he had neglected his duties and his studies. Yes, Cairn had given him leave to deal with the ravaging effects of his incomplete threadbond, but Bran could no longer pretend—even to himself—that he was in any state to go back to the fulfillment of his oath to the Court.He could only beg his father’s forgiveness and his great-uncle’s dispensation.

Both of which he had done in the letter he’d left behind on the table in his rooms, along with an apology to Maigdeann, asking her to please convey his regrets to the rest of their brothers and sisters, as well as their mother.

Bran paused at a break in the trail, an evened-out portion of the pathway before it resumed its climb to the grove surrounding Carraig Gate. Around him, wind pushed its way through whispering grasses, delicate blossoms in bright pinks and yellows and purples splashed through the strands of green-gold-silver. It was beautiful. Day or night, the fields surrounding the Courts were stunning in their celebration of both life and death.

The danger of those grasses was unapparent to the untrained eye, but the quicksilver edges of thesgian feurwould cut open exposed flesh, and the roots of the purple-paintedfuil-freumhwould drink it as quickly as the grasses spilled it. Life, for all its vivacious beauty, was as dangerous as death.

Bran resumed walking, wiping the sweat from his forehead, the heat and his own traitorous body making him dizzy. Not dizzy enough to stop, but enough to remind him why he was climbing toward the Gate to begin with. Why he had to return to Dunehame and to Jamie.

Because of his magic.

Definitely not because he was becoming attached to Jamie.

Chapter

Twenty-Five

It was cool—almost chilly—when Jamie finished lacing up his running shoes to head out to the crags, his knees almost completely healed from his fall a few weeks ago. Just a few tiny pink marks from where some of the bigger stones had bit into the skin. He’d been running even more than usual—he was restless and irritable, his muscles tense and his skin too tight. Not unlike the night he’d found Bran under attack.

Except Bran had gone back to his world, and Jamie was stuck in this one, at odds with himself and stressed about the fact that he wasn’t able to make progress with his research.

Or his social life.

Trixie and Rob were being patient with him, but they were clearly both worried about him and frequently annoyed at his dour presence. So he’d been mostly avoiding them, except for at work and the occasional meal when he couldn’t come up with a plausible excuse or needed groceries anyway.

He was also running more without really eating more, because he didn’t have the money for it. Running didn’t cost him anything, but food did. So he was also losing weight—not a lot, not to the point where it was really a problem, but he also knew that what he was doing to himself wasn’t healthy.

But Jamie couldn’t figure out what else to do with himself, because he had too much energy and not enough focus to do anything else. He’d tied several impossible knots in his macramé, forcing him to have to start over on more than one project, which had only made things worse by adding frustration to his restlessness.

It wasn’t a good situation.

And Jamie had no idea what to do about it. He felt bad about the shortness of his temper, but he couldn’t help it.

He wasn’t doing any better finding that damn thistle-burdock-knapweed-sea-holly, either. He’d sent off a photo of the stupid thing to medieval medical and herbal scholars all over Europe, and had gotten through three botany textbooks on Scotland, one on Wales, two on Ireland, and was working his way through the fourth on the whole of Great Britain, and so far had no luck.

He’d taken the drawing to the botany department on campus, and they’d only been able to give him the same recommendations he’d already found, but the shape of the blossom—if that’s what it was—was wrong in one, the leaves were wrong in another two or three, and the root system was wrong for something else.

Jamie was starting to think the damn thing didn’t exist. That the author of the herbal was insane or hallucinating or just making up plants because they could.

He’d even tried a paleobotanist, thinking that maybe the stupid thing was extinct now, but had existed in the fifteenth century, but he’d been told that wasn’t likely.

So he was agitated, hadn’t gotten a decent night of sleep in he didn’t know how long, wasn’t really eating right, and couldn’t make headway on his dissertation project.

Which meant he was spending far too much time running. Even as he took the stairs down from his floor, he could feel the fatigue in his leg muscles.

It was a bad idea, running on tired legs and not enough food. But he’d learned that it was a worse idea not to run, because then he practically bit people’s heads off at work or in the library.

So he ran.

Down the slope of the Royal Mile, around the corner at Holyrood, and up the path that led to Arthur’s Seat, his eyes peeled for any more sightings of whatever-the-hell that laughing creature had been.

Jamie wasn’t looking at the sky, and he didn’t notice a shadow pass over him—it was overcast, the cloud cover heavy, but not with rain—yet. It would before the day was over, Bran could tell that by the thickness in the air and the feel of water reaching from the sky to the earth below.

Bran knew better than to fly along with Jamie on his runs when the sun was out, so he was taking advantage of the grey day to follow the half-breed as his feet pounded up the gravel path.

Bran had no intention of letting Jamie know he was there.

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