Page 108 of Threadbound

Bran’s brow furrowed in a frown. “I dinna understand.”

“What was it that the recipe’s author was trying todo?Whydid he or she choose dead man’s breath? How did they evenknowabout it? And why are there also multiple antidotes?” Jamie was warming up to his subject now, drawn in by theintellectual puzzle, even despite the complexity of the fact that the plants in question were mixed across worlds.

Bran’s expression cleared, then clouded again, but the shadow on his features was thoughtful.

“Because,” Jamie continued, waving a hand with fingers darkened by charcoal, “I remember that there’s also ground pearl—which people thought acted as an antidote to various poisons.”

“Pearl?” Bran repeated.

“Yeah, you know, the little white gem?—”

“Aye, I know what a pearl is,” the fae interrupted. “But why did they think it would cure poisoning?”

Jamie shrugged. “They also thought a stone from a goat’s stomach would work.”

“A bezoar?”

“You know about bezoars?” Jamie was surprised by that.

The smirk on Bran’s lips made Jamie a little nervous. “A bezoar is actually used to help cure several poisons,” the fae informed him, causing Jamie’s brow to furrow. “Including the poison that… forced you to send me back here.” Jamie opened his mouth to object that no doctors or scientists had ever discovered any such thing, but then the fae continued. “It just happens that they’re only useful againstmagicalpoisons.”

“Magical poisons,” Jamie repeated.

“Aye,” came the response. “They work to counter the magic involved, not the toxic substance of a more… conventional poison.”

Jamie blinked. “So… magic can be poison?”

“Aye, of course. Magic can be anything, in the hands of the right magus.”

Jamie ran a hand through his hair, causing Bran to make a soft sound. “What?”

“You’ve put charcoal in your hair,” the fae informed him, sounding amused.

“Oh.” Jamie’s cheeks flushed.

Bran’s fingers flexed, and Jamie wondered whether the fae was suppressing an impulse to run them through Jamie’s hair, going after the smudges tarnishing Jamie’s blond waves. Jamie held his breath for a few seconds, his pulse speeding up at the thought of Bran’s talons scraping along his scalp. But then the moment passed, Bran turning away and disappointment flooding Jamie’s already hot face.

Jamie still didn’t understand what he’d done wrong. Or hadn’t done. He’d tried telling himself repeatedly that fae took sex much more casually than he did—that Bran had just done what he would have done with any other fae, if they’d been in that position.

It didn’t make Jamie feel any better. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed himself—because he definitely had—but because he wanted more, and Bran clearly wasn’t interested in more. Which meant that Jamie spent most of his time pining when he couldn’t manage to distract himself by trying to teach Patch how to fetch or tying knots—most of them intentionally chosen—in just about any material he could find.

Jamie cleared his throat. “So bezoars. Actually help against poison?”

Bran took pity on him, or so Jamie assumed, and returned to the conversation. “Aye, they do.”

Jamie suppressed a groan,rubbing his hands over his face, unknowingly smearing more charcoal across his features. It was nearly noon, sun filtering through the leaves and pane-less windows to paint shadows and light across the pile of books and papers Jamie had spent the better part of the last…

He squinted up at the light.

The last seventeen or so hours?

He sat back in his chair—which, while definitely more comfortable than the chairs he sat in at the university library, was not the most ergonomic thing he’d ever sat in—twisting a little to crack his spine and ease the tight muscles of his back.

Patch, lying on a pile of papers like an extremely deranged version of the Cheshire cat, looked up, blinking through slitted eyes at Jamie as though asking why on earth he was still awake at this time of day.

Even after weeks spent in the Court of Shades, Jamie still wasn’t used to a nocturnal life. He’d essentially given up, generally staying awake through most of the daylight hours, then trying to stay up as long as possible at night before crashing sometime around four in the morning.

It was wreaking havoc on his body—not enough sleep, mounting stress at the thought of a war he knew nothing about, more stress about the disastrous state of his not-relationship with Bran, and even more stress about the fact that he knew everyone at the Court thought of him as a freak of nature at best and an unwanted interloper at worst. He didn’t need to understand the intricacies of fae culture—which he definitely did not—to read the disdain in the glances cast his way.

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