Page 75 of Threadbound

The pantomime of dying would have been funny if it hadn’t been so very real. The booka’s tiny features were sorrowful and concerned. It was oddly touching.

“I know,” Bran replied. “But it’s my choice.”

The booka patted his thumb, the gesture oddly endearing. And then her wings blurred into motion, and she alit from his hand and went to the windowsill before letting out a trill that summoned her mate and child.

Bran watched them for a few minutes, their wings and faintly shimmery skin glinting in the dim filtered light coming through the window. The other two bookas mostly ignored him, but the matriarch kept looking over at him, her expression a little wistful. It reminded Bran way too much of Maigdeann in the last few days before he’d left Elfhame, and it made him feel guilty.

Guilty because he was essentially abandoning his family and his oath to his father and the Court of Shades in order to protect Jamie.

Bran closed his eyes, wishing he had a better solution than to betray either his family or his bondmate.Lugh and Taranis, what do I do?

The gods didn’t answer. They never did.

Jamie woke up early,just as the sky was turning that particular shade of grey that said dawn was only moments away. He rolled onto his side, peering around the curtain to see if Bran was awake—the fae was curled on his side, his face tucked into his arm. The slow pattern of his back as it rose and fell told Jamie he was still sleeping.

Jamie carefully swung his legs out of bed, easing around the curtain and heading to the bathroom, where he carefully closed the door to muffle the sound as he brushed his teeth and went to the bathroom. Then he padded back to his set of drawers, on top of which he’d set out his running clothes the night before, since Bran was usually asleep when Jamie got up.

So Jamie got dressed, tied on his running shoes, and—after hesitating a moment—took his keys. The deadbolt wouldn’t lock without a key, but the handle could, so if Bran wanted to leave, he could still lock Jamie out. Or himself out, too, Jamie supposed, although he didn’t expect Bran would go anywhere. He hadn’t without Jamie at any point in the last few weeks.

Jamie headed out, as usual, to the crags, following a slightly winding pathway through the city parallel to the Royal Mile. Even though it was early, there was always traffic of both the foot and vehicle variety on the main roads, and Jamie preferred to not have to run around people or cars if he could help it.

Even though he knew Bran was back at his apartment, Jamie still found himself checking the skies for a raven’s shadowy form, then shook his head at himself for being disappointed. It was ridiculous that he be disappointed at all, but it was evenmore ludicrous that he was missing the bird form of the fae man sleeping on his floor.

But Jamie had enjoyed their runs together—well, his run, Bran’s flight. It was something they’d shared, Bran circling above, Jamie’s feet pounding the earth below. It felt… right.

And if that isn’t a sign that you’re loony, Jamie Weaver, I don’t know what is.

Jamie snorted softly to himself and kept running. At least he knew where Bran was, and that he was safe—relatively so, anyway—and warm and fed. It was a marked improvement from a few weeks before.

He paused at Arthur’s Seat, as he always did, to look out over the city, his breath fogging in the chill morning air in front of him. It hadn’t dropped below freezing, not quite yet, although the lows were pushing it, and the weather app on Jamie’s phone was showing potential frost later in the week. It definitely got colder faster in Edinburgh than it did in Maynardville, but Jamie didn’t mind. He liked the cold and the snow, and he liked the fact that Edinburgh summers didn’t try to strangle you to death with heat and humidity the way they did in Tennessee.

With one last deep breath, Jamie turned and headed back down the crag, the familiar crunch of dirt and gravel under his shoes like a mantra.

While he might not be worried about Bran’s safety anymore—or, at least, not as much—he was still worried. Bran always looked tired, with soft bruising around his forest green eyes and hollows at his cheeks. His skin looked a little too translucent, even in comparison to the Bran Jamie remembered from before the attack. Of course, that might be his mind misremembering, but Jamie didn’t think so. He’d also noticed that Bran sometimes shuddered or shivered when he thought Jamie wasn’t looking, or moved more slowly than he should be. Little signs—signs like Jamie’s momma had started showing beforeshe’d gotten sick enough that Bill Eckel had agreed to pay for a doctor.

Jamie didn’t want to watch another person in his life sicken and die. Hewould, if it came down to it, but he didn’t want to. And he wasn’t entirely sure that it was necessary in Bran’s case. After all, the fairy world had magic—Bran’s father was a healer. He’d healed Bran once already, or he’d tried to, anyway. If what Bran said was accurate.

Jamie wondered if Bran had left the fairy world too soon and that’s why he was sick. Or if there was something else that Jamie didn’t know. That Bran wasn’t telling him.

He had the feeling that there were probably a lot of things Bran wasn’t telling him. Quite a few of them probably without even thinking about it.

Even though he’d been sleeping on Jamie’s floor, they mostly went about their lives in silence. Jamie wasn’t complaining—the silence between them was comfortable, moving through and around the confined space of Jamie’s tiny apartment and each other without any difficulty, even though Jamie was not a small man. It was true that Bran was, but Jamie had often felt like he took up too much room in his apartment when he was there alone.

Every day, Jamie would get up and go about his life as though Bran weren’t there—except that he was. It wasn’t that Bran made himself invisible or kept out of the way. He helped in the kitchen when Jamie cooked, ate with him, read something he’d pulled from Jamie’s book collection while Jamie worked… He just fit himself seamlessly into Jamie’s life. As though he’d always been there.

When Jamie thought too hard about it—like when he was bored at work, pacing the hallways filled with the remnants of centuries of life and death—it was a little alarming. A personshouldn’t just be able to slip their way into your life with barely a ripple.

Jamie’d kept the current state of their… whatever it was—since he wasn’t sure ‘relationship’ was the right word for it—to himself. He knew Rob would be worried about Bran exploiting him—maybe Trixie would, too, although Jamie thought she might just be concerned about whether or not Bran was good for him.

Jamie wasn’t sure about either of those things. Bran wasn’t using him for money—that much he was sure about. Bran could spin coins—and did, even when Jamie had pointed out that if he did it too often he might actually be contributing to the debasing of coinage, which had made the fae laugh. But Bran was more than paying for his own food, and Jamie’s landlord hadn’t noticed that there were two of them living in the tiny apartment, or, if she had, she didn’t seem to care.

But Bran had said that he’d come back to the mortal world—Dunehame, he called it—because he needed to be near Jamie in order to stabilize his magic, so he kinda was taking advantage of Jamie. Not dishonestly, since he’d come right out and said it, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t getting something out of living on Jamie’s floor. He certainly seemed healthier inside Jamie’s apartment than he had while living as a raven outside of it—and he definitely didn’t have to eat out of trash bins anymore—although Jamie didn’t know if that was the consequence of magic or just some good, square meals.

Jamie had also learned that whatever fae ate, Bran, at least, didn’t know how to cook. He’d asked if fae cooked their food, and Bran had given him a funny look and told him thatof coursefae cooked…hejust didn’t. So Jamie was teaching him—it wasn’t that hecouldn’t, but the fae clearly had never even tried. Bran had objected and said that he didn’t cookfood,but he was perfectly capable of mixing things together to make potionsor even the occasional medicinal tea, so that was the approach Jamie was using in teaching him.

Recipes were recipes, after all, whether they were for magical potions you were supposed to brew with urine, grave dirt, and red pepper, or a stew made of beef, potatoes, carrots, peas, and pearl onions. Which was what Jamie had made with Bran yesterday. It had been his day off, so they’d slow-cooked the stew, and Jamie had made bread, explaining to Bran how to knead the dough, unable to keep from smiling to himself as he watched Bran’s much smaller and more slender fingers—the knuckles a little more gnarled than he’d expect for so slight a frame—working the dough, especially in comparison to his own.

Watching Bran knead the bread, Jamie wanted to take his hand and hold it up to his own palm to see how Bran’s long, thin fingers did or didn’t match up against his own meatier hands. He wanted to know what Bran’s skin would feel like when he wasn’t feverish, his skin slick with sweat and blood, or clammy with fear.

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