Page 107 of Threadbound

“Oh! Um. Yeah.” He sat up, then rubbed at one tired eye.

“Ach. You’ve smudged—” Bran didn’t finish the sentence, but leaned forward, using his thumb to wipe charcoal from Jamie’s pencil off his cheek.

Jamie felt his cheeks flush. “Thanks.”

Bran nodded, his expression unreadable. Then he reached out, one taloned finger pointing to one of the plants in Jamie’s drawing. “This is aite a selchidh. A selkie’s flipper. And this”—His finger pointed at another drawing.—“isseudan a ainnir, or maiden’s jewels.”

Jamie looked up. “What do they do?”

“The selkie’s flipper is a binder—when you pulp it, it becomes sticky and thick. It would make the mixture spreadable—more like a poultice than a liquid. Maiden’s jewels is used as an antidote to several poisons.”

“Like the…” Jamie paused, unable to remember the name Bran had used for his troublesome plant. “The dead man’s… whatever?”

“Dead man’s breath,” the fae supplied. “No. There is no antidote for that.” Bran pursed his lips. “None I know of, at any rate.”

“Could this be?”

Bran was shaking his head. “No. Maiden’s jewels is useful for most bites and stings, including the bite of theCu Sith, and the venom of several other creatures, but I havena seen it used on plant-based poisons.”

Jamie didn’t ask what aCu Sithwas, mostly because he didn’t want to know. He was sure it was something dangerous and unpleasant, especially if you needed an antidote for its bite. Most things in Elfhame, as far as Jamie could tell, were dangerous and/or unpleasant, or at the very least terrifying.

Jamie had always imagined, when he’d been a child, that the fairy realm would be full of flowers and butterflies and delightful creatures—tiny little perfect people with gossamer wings, soft and fluffy rabbits, birds with long tails that shimmered in the sunlight.

There were birds with long tails, but Jamie mostly saw them at night, and they also had massive talons and a twisted double-beak that was clearly designed for predation, or at least ripping scavenged flesh off of bones. Patch was the closest thing Jamie’d seen to a butterfly, and while he’d grown fond of thegealach marcaiche, delicate and lovely Patch was not. Weirdly adorable, once you got over the creepiness of its six legs and fur and smushed face, but definitely not fairy-like.

It was pretty clear to Jamie that any human understanding of ‘fairy’ was horrifically flawed.

Or maybe it was just the Sluagh who were nightmarish. Bran had warned him that they were creatures of darkness and fear. Maybe if Jamie ever met the Sidhe, he would have a different view.

And that thought made him feel guilty, because he belonged to the Sluagh, for all intents and purposes. Or at least to Bran, who was Sluagh. Mostly. Jamie didn’t totally understand how that worked—Bran’s mother was something called a white lady, tall and ethereal, beautiful in a way that was almost painful. She was Sidhe, although Bran’s father, Cairn, was Sluagh, a wraith, his skin like stone.

Half of Bran’s siblings were Sidhe, and half were Slaugh, which Jamie supposed made sense, but only two took after their mother and another three after their father. The remaining five—because Bran had nine brothers and sisters—were other things entirely. Bran and his brother Iolair were both boobrie, Maigdeann and Iasg were finfolk, and Earrach was something called a ghillie du, a tall, dark-green and bark-skinned man who vaguely reminded Jamie of an Ent fromThe Lord of the Rings. Except a lot smaller.

But how a fair-skinned elven woman and a man built like a walking grave-statue genetically produced bird-shifters and tree-people and mermaids, Jamie had no idea. He also didn’t really want to ask, because either it was just overly personal and rude or not all of the siblings were actually related to theirparents. Bringing it up would be horribly awkward no matter what.

“Jamie?” Bran interrupted his thoughts, and Jamie felt his cheeks heat.

“Sorry. Thinking,” he mumbled. “What would be an antidote to the dead man’s breath?” he asked.

Bran shook his head. “There isna one,” he replied. “Either you survive it, or you dinna.”

“Or apparently you’re dead already,” Jamie muttered.

“Aye,” Bran agreed. “Or that.” The matter-of-fact way he said it did not help Jamie feel any better.

But he found himself still deeply curious about the plant. About what it could do. What it did. What the author of the recipe book thought it did or could do. A few months ago, Jamie would have immediately dismissed the possibility of necromancy as fantasy or superstition. But that was before he watched a man turn into a bird, and that same man bring him to a place where nothing was quite right.

Including Jamie.

He sighed, his eyes staring half-unfocused at the doodled illustrations. “How did sketches of Elfhame plants end up in a recipe in Edinburgh?” Jamie asked.

Bran shook his head. “I dinna know,” he replied.

But Jamie was also shaking his head. “No, that’s the wrong question.”

“The wrong question?” Bran asked.

“Whydid they end up in Edinburgh?”

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