Page 64 of Threadbound

But when he glanced out the window, he could see—in the dim light of mostly-obscured street and safety lights—the hunched form of a bird on the opposite roof, its tiles slick with rain.

He looked away again quickly, not wanting Bran to think he’d been seen, but seeing the fairy sitting outside in the increasing autumn chill made Jamie feel guilt about his hot bowl of food while the bird sat out there hunched in the wet.

“Fuck it,” he muttered to himself, then put down his bowl and went back into the kitchen, where he opened a cupboard and pulled out a box of cheese-flavored crackers. It was a different brand than the ones he’d had as a kid, but Jamie was a sucker for cheese-flavored crackers, regardless of what brand they were. And these were pretty close to the way he remembered them from childhood, when they’d been an occasional treat his momma had bought when he had to go to the dentist or do some other unpleasant thing that required bribery to get him to do.

Jamie opened the box, sneaking a couple crackers before pouring a good handful into a bowl. After he put the box back, he carried the bowl across the room, opened the window, and tucked the bowl onto the ledge.

He waited a while, but the bird silhouette didn’t move, so Jamie shut the window—because it was chilly—and went back to his now-cooler bowl of pasta. He only half-watched the episodes ofMidsomer,constantly checking the window to see if Bran had flown over to eat the crackers or see what it was that Jamie had put out for him. When he finally got tired, Jamie did go look down into the bowl, but it was just as full as it had been, and he was hit with a wave of disappointment.

With a sigh, Jamie went to bed.

Bran waitedfor Jamie to turn out the lights—including the small reading light clipped to the little set of drawers beside his bed. Bran knew Jamie liked to read at night, and sometimes that tiny light stayed on well into the wee hours of the morning,especially when he wasn’t going to get up extra early to go for a run before work.

The Sluagh waited a little while longer just to make sure the half-breed was asleep before winging his way across the open space to see what Jamie had left in the bowl.

If he’d been in human or fae form, Bran would have laughed. Jamie had left him crackers—what looked and smelled like the exact same kind of crackers that Jamie had given him a decade or more ago on the first day they had met… not that Jamie had known what was happening.

But a gift deserved a gift, so Bran flew back over to the broken window to see what he had to give Jamie in return.

One side-effect of spending so much time as a raven was that Bran started to develop slightly bird-like habits. One of those was being drawn to shiny things—not simply spotting a lost earring or coin dropped in the cobblestone streets, but feeling compelled to pick it up and bring it back to his… well,nest, he supposed.

It was a natural byproduct of spending too much time as a raven—the amount of time he spent in any given form often shifted his behavior. Too much time as a boobrie, and he would become feral and wild. Too much time as a raven, and he was skittish and inclined to pick up shiny objects. Bran had never been terribly inclined to spend much time in human form, so he wasn’t sure what habits that would cause.

But he was back in his nest to give Jamie something in exchange for the gift of crackers. Since their first encounter had involved Bran giving him a tiny star-shaped bead in return, something similar seemed fitting for this, as well. Bran pushed aside some fabric scraps to expose an earring—just one—with dangling brass beads. It seemed as good a thing as anything else he had—a couple pennies, a little keychain charm of a bear, a bright pink bottlecap—to offer Jamie in return.

He flew back to the window, setting the earring beside the bowl so that he could eat the offered crackers.

Tourist season in Edinburgh was dying down, and there were far fewer people milling about in the streets and leaving food scraps behind, so he was hungry. Even though he didn’t want to owe Jamie anything more—and Bran knew full well that a lost earring was hardly adequate repayment for the bowl of crackers Jamie had left him—the possibility of a fuller belly was a strong incentive to just add to the tally of what he already owed the half-breed.

So Bran ate the crackers, then put the earring in the bowl so that it was clear that he was making an offering in return. While he was tempted to try to huddle up against the window to be that much closer to Jamie, Bran knew that was foolish—both because the sill was damp and wet, and because if he fell asleep, Jamie might well find him in the morning.

Of course, the fact that Jamie had left out crackers at all told him that half-breed knew he was there. He didn’t know if Jamie had just noticed him—he’d been tired and achy, his magic having been particularly brutal to him over the last few days, and the cool and wet of the weather wasn’t helping either his health or his mood—or if the half-breed had somehow been aware of his existence for some time.

Every now and then it had seemed that Jamie might be about to turn while on his run or like he’d stared at the tree outside the library just a little longer than perhaps was normal, but Bran had convinced himself that Jamie wasn’t aware of him. That his presence wasn’t remarkable. That Jamie didn’t care that Bran had disappeared from his life. That he wouldn’t care when Bran inevitablydiddisappear from his life when he was finally killed by thegeàrd soilleiror his own out-of-control magic.

But it seemed that Jamie did know. And did care. At least enough to make a point of leaving food for him. It wasn’tmuch, but it wassomething. And, Bran reasoned with himself, it wasn’t like normal ravens typically ate food like Jamie’s pasta or casserole. Jamie probably didn’t think that Bran could while in raven form, either, even though both Bran and normal ravens could almost certainly eat a lot more human food than most humans thought appropriate.

Bran flew back to his attic nest, settling himself into the blankets and scraps of fabric he’d collected. He couldn’t really do much magic while in his raven body—he lacked the dexterity he needed to spin fabric or coins, for instance—even when it wasn’t being erratic. So he had to make do with what he had, because there was no longer any guarantee that he would be able to shift back into raven form if he shifted out of it.

If he evencouldshift out of it.

Bran tried not to think too hard about that. Because while he might not be dying from thegeàrd soilleir’s poison, the fact that the threadbond was incomplete was slowly killing him. Perhaps not literally—after all theBean Nighehad given him three possible deaths, and not one of them was from losing his mind, although he supposed that bleeding to death on the ground didn’t preclude him from being insane while he did it. Neither did being a casualty of war. That last one—the breath of your heart’s deepest desire—he didn’t understand, although the thought that he might already have made choices that foreclosed that option made him feel a little melancholy.

But, he reminded himself, he didn’tknowthat. Maybe that possible future—one in which he was loved and had a beloved in return—was still before him.

He could hope.

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

It was twilight, the in-between time when Elfhame belonged neither to the Sidhe nor the Sluagh. It was a time full of nearly limitless potential—for trade, diplomacy, exchange. It was a time when Sluagh and Sidhe could cross the boundaries that separated the Court of Shades from the Sunlit Court, to share pathways and knowledge, food and conversation. When there was both light and shadow painted across the world and everything was eerie and magical.

It was also a time of war. Of battle and blood and death dealt from one Court to the other.

TheNeach-Cogaidh, guardians of the Court of Shades, among them Bran’s brothers and sister, the sons and daughter of Cairn mac Darach, Prince of the Sluagh, found themselves caught in the open by the Sunlit Court’sgeàrd soilleir, their weapons drawn and glinting even in the twilight gloom.

The way Puinnsean mac Cairn, Bran’s closest brother, explained to his father between gasps of pain as Cairn stitched and wove the ragged edges of his wounds back together, theNeach-Cogaidhhad been pacing the boundaries of the lands belonging to the Court of Shades—lands where Sluagh creatures, high and low, found protection and community—when theywere approached by thegeàrd, their weapons already drawn. The Captain of theNeachhad not drawn in return, but was nevertheless cut down, his blood and breath both gasped out into the dark-stained earth, leaving behind a curse on the ground.

---