Page 104 of Threadbound

“Is it poisonous?” Jamie’s pulse was hammering in his throat.

“It can be,” Bran answered. “Use it with the right other ingredients, and it can raise the dead. Use it with the wrong ones, and you’llbethe one who’s dead.”

Jamie tore his eyes away from the plant, which was a perfect match—at least in his memory—for the thistle-burdock-knapweed-sea-holly that he’d been trying to identify to no avail for months. “And by raise the dead, you mean?—”

Bran’s dark brows rose over curious green eyes. “Is there another meaning to the phrase I am na’ familiar with?”

Jamie blinked. “So necromancy is… real?” He probably shouldn’t have been surprised. He was in Elfhame, having crossed a Gate from the human world to one occupied by fae andgealach marcaicheand God only knew what else.

“Aye, it’s real.” It was clear from Bran’s tone that there was more to it than that.

“You’ve seen it?” Jamie wanted to know. He wanted to know everything, especially how it worked and what you actually managed to get when you raised the dead—because everything he’d ever heard about it tended to not end terribly well, either for the dead person or the necromancer.

It was also yet another reminder that Bran wasn’t human, and the more time Jamie spent with him, the more obvious that became. Jamie didn’tmindthat Bran wasn’t human, but it was taking some getting used to. And not necessarily in a good way.

Jamie wasn’t sure if it had been the magic of the threadbond ceremony that had made them feel closer than they actually were, but since that night, Jamie had felt an uncomfortable distance between himself and Bran—one that continuously reminded him of how very different they were. Bran was a predator, a creature of darkness and shadow. Jamie liked to rise with the sun and had trouble hurting a fly.

And the way the fae moved was odd, too. Quick and sharp, like a… well, like a bird. Which he sort of was. But the more time Bran spent in his fae skin, the less he seemed to resemble the man Jamie had first gotten to know.

The next thing Bran said didn’t help at all.

“I’ve done it,” he answered.

“You’ve.Done. Necromancy.” Jamie wasn’t sure whether he should be impressed or horrified. As it was, he definitely felt both.

“Aye,” came the answer. Bran shifted his weight, the large talons of his feet scratching slightly in the dust as though he knew Jamie was uncomfortable. “Not often. It’s hard work, and the dead need soothing to lay themselves down again.”

Jamie swallowed a couple of times, something thick and bulging in his throat. “Soothing,” he repeated, not sure how to respond, what questions to ask, anything. He had so very many. And yes, he understood that there was a certain amount of hypocrisy involved in his instinctive revulsion against the idea of necromancy, given the fact that he worked in a museum full of dead body parts suspended in thousands upon thousands of jars, but he couldn’t help it. He justified it in his head because his dead bodies didn’t get up and move.

Bran sighed, turning to face away from Jamie and toward the dappled shadows of the forest. “I am na’ interested in keeping them as revenant slaves,” he replied, and his tone made it clear that he was bothered by Jamie’s question. Or maybe the whole line of conversation, Jamie didn’t know.

Jamie was bothered by the conversation, too, but now that he’d started it, he would be more bothered by ending it without knowing the answers to his questions. “Revenantslaves?”

Bran turned back to him, his sharp but delicate features set in a frown. “Aye, revenant slaves. It’s what you get if you keep the dead from their graves.” The frown deepened. “Do you reallythink I would force the dead from their long rest for any longer than is strictly necessary?”

“What would make it necessary at all?” Jamie demanded. He was being aggressive, and he knew it, but he couldn’t help himself. It was one thing to preserve the dead, but it was another thing entirely to raise them. Raising the dead… It rubbed Jamie every wrong way there was to rub.

Bran’s expression darkened even further, although his green eyes were focused on the ground, not Jamie. “Watching my siblings die,” he snapped.

Jamie blinked rapidly. “Oh,” he breathed. It helped. The idea that Bran did what he did to save his siblings. Of course, he’d have to have known how to raise the dead already. Jamie tried not to think too hard about that.

“Aye,oh,” Bran repeated, defensive and angry at Jamie’s questions. The half-breed was judging him, believing himself morally superior because he’d never had to do anything unsavory to protect someone he loved. Well, Bran was willing to do whatever was necessary in order to protect his family and his people. And when thegeàrd soilleirhad ambushed them in the twilight, the time when Sluagh and Sidhe traditionally walked a hesitant path of truce, they had been unprepared for battle.

So Bran had used what he had—his magic. Necromancy wasn’t an art for the squeamish or for anyone with a sensitive stomach, but it had evened the odds between the sevengeàrdand Bran, Iolair, and Mochthrath. The attack had been especially surprising because of Mochthrath—Bran’s eldest living sister was, like her mother, Sidhe, a white lady.

Of Bran’s five Sidhe siblings, only Mochthrath had chosen to becomeNeach-Cogaidh, a sworn defender of the Court of Shades. It wasn’t common, for a Sidhe to choose to protect the court of the Sluagh, but it wasn’t common for a Sidhe and Sluaghto marry, either, and yet the Sidhe King himself had two Sluagh wives—whom, by all accounts, he hated, but still.

Defensiveness made Bran’s temper short.

“What do you want with it, anyway?” The fae asked irritably, gesturing at the flower in question.

Jamie blinked, and for a moment an expression of hurt crossed his features, but it was gone again so quickly that Bran wasn’t certain he hadn’t imagined it. “Someone drew it in one of the books I’ve been studying,” he answered, the words a mumble Bran barely made out.

It was Bran’s turn to stare. “One of your human books?”

Jamie scowled. “Yes, one of myhumanbooks.” Now Jamie sounded defensive, and Bran silently cursed himself. He wasn’t trying to pick a fight with Jamie. He didn’twantto pick a fight with Jamie.

What hewantedwas to go back to the night of their threadbinding, to feel Jamie’s hands on his skin, to watch as Jamie explored his body without hesitation or that guarded look in those blue eyes. The uncertainty. The distrust. But everything Bran said, everything he did, seemed to make Jamie withdraw more and more. To put distance between them that was both physical and emotional.

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