Page 109 of Threadbound

Jamie really just… wanted to go home.

He sighed, then reached out and ran his fingers over Patch’s ears. Thegealach marcaichelet out a soft thrum, and Jamie felt a little guilty. There was no possible way he could bring Patch home with him, and he’d grown as attached to the fluffy monstrosity as thegealach marcaicheseemed to be to him. But the idea of bringing it back…

If someone didn’t freak out and kill the poor thing, Patch would likely panic at the sights and sounds of cars, fly away, andget lost in Edinburgh. And if a person didn’t kill it, it might well die of exposure or starvation or?—

No, he definitely couldn’t bring Patch back with him.

But he still wanted to go home. To see Trixie and Rob again, assuming either of them would ever forgive him for abandoning them without so much as aHey, guys, I have an emergency to go deal with. He had no idea how long he’d been gone. What felt like weeks could be hours or days or years or even decades, if some of the texts he’d read about the fairy realm could be believed. Some could, he knew, while others got things horribly wrong, so he had no idea how time passed while he was here.

For all he knew, they’d declared him dead, or at least missing, he’d lost his apartment, his place at the university, his job at the Surgeons’ Hall Museums, and Rob and Trixie had completely forgotten he’d existed.

Jamie must have made some sort of noise of distress, because Bran stirred in the chair where he’d curled up an hour or so after dawn.

“All right?” the fae asked, his brogue made thicker by sleep. Jamie found it disturbingly adorable, but he set his jaw against the smile that tried to reshape his features. He needed to go back to Edinburgh, and he couldn’t let himself get distracted by a fae who clearly didn’t think of him the same way.

It would be easier just to rip off the proverbial bandaid.

“I—want to go home,” Jamie answered, opting for brutal honesty.

Bran sat up a little more, blinking dark green eyes as though he hadn’t quite processed the words. If Jamie had wanted him to object, he didn’t, although he didn’t look happy about Jamie’s pronouncement, either. “You dinna like it here?” Bran said, finally, although the tone of the question was more of a statement than an interrogatory.

Jamie shrugged, his cheeks heating again as he toyed with Patch’s soft ears. “I like it fine,” he answered, knowing he sounded sullen. “I’m not sure it likes me back, though.”I’m not sure you like me back,he thought, although he didn’t have enough courage to say that part out loud. “I don’t belong here,” he said, instead.

Bran pressed his lips together, but he didn’t argue. Jamie couldn’t decide if he wished Bran had, or if he was relieved that the fae seemed to agree with his assessment.

“I need to go back to my work,” Jamie continued. “My research. My job.” He sighed. “If I even stillhavea job.”

“You dinna find what you need here?” Bran asked him.

“I—don’t actually know,” Jamie admitted. “I can’t remember all the details of the recipes. I need the book, or at least my notes, and I don’t have either here. This is—” He gestured around the explosion of books and papers. “This is honestly fantastic, but it doesn’t mean anything without the original.” He sighed again. “And there’s nothing for me todowith it here. It’s not like the fae have peer-reviewed journals.” Jamie narrowed his eyes at Bran. “Do you?”

“No, we dinna have… peer-reviewed journals.” The fae’s lips twitched. “At least I dinna think so, but I dinna actually know what that means.”

“It’s… researchers. Other people who research the same thing, those are your peers. They read your stuff, and if they think it’s good enough, then they publish it.”

“So you share your knowledge with others?”

Jamie frowned. “Don’t you?”

“Oh, aye,” the fae replied, sitting up straighter and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his feathered hair shimmering with slight iridescence in the sunlight. “We share recipes and lend books and work together over the pestle and cauldron.”

Jamie nodded. “That sounds…” He struggled to find the words.

Bran arched elegant eyebrows, waiting.

“Nice?” Jamie finished, color suffusing his cheeks again. It wasn’t the right word—inadequate to what he imagined was a joyful camaraderie shared over herbs and fire and dusty tomes.

“Nice,” Bran repeated.

“I mean—I wish that was how it worked in my world,” Jamie blurted. “But we—you have to makemoney, so you need a job, and to get a job in academia you have topublish, and…”

“So money is the problem, then,” Bran remarked, sounding mildly amused.

Jamie wasn’t sure what to say to that. Bran wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t like Jamie had a choice, since he lived in the world… Well, he supposed now hedidhave a choice. He could go back to his own world, with its capitalism and poverty and violence, or stay here, in Elfhame, where money meant nothing.

Put like that, it was tempting to imagine staying, studying potion recipes and herbal remedies here in this room full of books and dappled sunlight, never having to worry about his precarious finances ever again.

And never see Trixie and Rob again. Never see Billy or Nora or Ginny or Tommy. People who cared about him. Who needed him. Because it wasn’t just about him. It was about everyone else who relied on him.

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