Page 135 of Threadbound

And then a smile split her features, lighting up her whole face. “James, this is sobloodycool.”

Chapter

Forty-Six

“Where the bloody fuck am I supposed to find mermaid’s blood?” Rob wanted to know. “And is that athing, or are mermaids real?”

“Finfolk are real,” Bran supplied. “I suspect that is what your people would call a mermaid.”

“Finfolk,” Rob muttered under his breath as he checked the list in their hotel room over paper cups of cheap tea. “And can we get blood from one of these finfolk?”

“Oh, aye. My sister will do it,” Bran replied confidently. Maigdeann would more than willingly give blood to save their father.

“Your sister is amermaid?” Despite Bran’s very real existence, Rob was still having trouble with the existence of fae and magic. Once she’d recovered from the initial shock, Trixie had embraced her new reality, asking Bran more questions than he’d known the answers to, demanding demonstrations of magic, and wanting to know literally everything she could think of—what did itfeellike to cross through a Gate? What did itfeellike to change shape? Did he have any special dietary needs? Had he been born or hatched from an egg?

No one had asked—yet—what he was doing with Jamie. Neither Trixie nor Rob—for all Rob’s difficulty with magic—seemed concerned that Bran was exploiting Jamie for some sort of dark or nefarious purpose. Or, at least, they hadn’t openly accused him of it, anyway.

“When’s the next full moon?” Trixie asked, looking up from one of the transcribed pages.

“Tomorrow,” Bran answered. It was why they’d already driven north and were staying in this somewhat questionable motel—they needed to gather moor-heather under a full moon. They were currently in Pitlochry, slightly south of Cairngorms National Park—the site of the moor where they planned to gather said heather. There were stargazing sites in the park, so they’d let tourists in at night, and Cairngorms also had several lochs, which was where they’d find ashrays. Specifically, ashray gold.

Jamie, Rob, and Trixie had taken Bran’s word that he knew what that meant—none of them had—and that he’d be able to procure it.

They would get the heather tomorrow, Maigdeann would give them the blood they needed, and Bran knew where they could getite a selchidh,seudan a ainnir, and theanail an duine mhairbh. Jamie could make bread, and honey could be purchased from a store. They’d need to stop at a farm for milk, according to Jamie, because he wanted to make sure that they replicated medieval conditions—while he could make bread the old way, they’d have to beg raw milk from a farmer. Just in case that mattered.

In addition to the heather—which they had to gather under the full moon—they’d need to find bog myrtle, hyssop, yew-berries, and elderflowers, all of which would be a bit of achallenge given the snow on the ground. There would be some they could probably buy from herbal dealers, but Bran was fairly certain they’d have to find the yew themselves, since dried wouldn’t do.

The last things—the things that would be really difficult, were the ashray gold, ground pearl, and the blood of a witch. Bran had already offered to spin them enough coin to buy a pearl, if it came down to that, although he didn’t know where they were going to find a witch’s blood, since they would need to find a witch.

As for the ashray gold, Bran was hopeful, but he’d have to bargain. What an ashray would ask for in return, he didn’t know. They were odd—ashrays. It was never clear to him precisely what motivated them. Sometimes they were docile, quiet. Sometimes deadly. He couldn’t tell if their unpredictability was caprice or a lack of understanding on his part. It didn’t particularly matter—he’d give them whatever they demanded. He’d have to.

He hadn’t shared any of that with the mortals—not because he didn’t trust them, exactly…

Bran sighed. He wasn’t sure why, precisely, he hadn’t told Jamie. He trusted Jamie—he didn’t know Trixie or Rob well enough, but he trusted Jamie, he just…

He didn’t want Jamie to be reminded of how different they were.

Jamie’s feelings of being out of place in Elfhame, of being different and unaccepted by the Sluagh, were part of what had driven them apart following the threadbinding. Bran had no desire to bring back any such worries. He would rather stay in Dunehame—once they completed their current task, anyway—than cause Jamie to feel as though he didn’t belong. Bran himself wasn’t comfortable, exactly, in Dunehame, but he was more comfortable among humans with Jamie than he was in Elfhame without Jamie.

It was almost funny, if he’d been able to put aside the circumstances, to think about how much he’d resisted Dunehame, resisted and dismissed Jamie as a foolish half-breed, and yet here he was, so desperate for Jamie’s approval and affection that he was willing to give up his whole life?—

“And what is it, child, that will make giving all that you have worthwhile?”TheBean Nighe’s words came back to him, suddenly, as though on a breath of wind.

Bran swallowed. He hadn’t had an answer when she’d first asked the question.

He had one now.

“Bran?” The man who had given him the answer spoke his name, and Bran realized that he’d ceased to pay attention to the conversation around him.

“Sorry,” he half-mumbled. “What?”

“Does the wordashraymean anything to you?” From his tone, it was clear that Jamie was repeating a question. “Because that’s what the word looked like to me, but I don’t know what anashrayis.”

“Aye,” Bran answered, still distracted by the fact that hehadan answer to theBean Nighe’s question, and if he had the answer, that meant that she would have to fulfill his wish. His wish for his father’s cause to be victorious.

He now regretted not specifying that hisfatherwould be victorious, because it was technically possible for the Sluagh cause—and the life of the Holly King—to be triumphant without Cairn mac Darach leading them. It wasn’t what Bran wanted, certainly, but the wish hadn’t been specific enough.

That was one of the many dangers of wishes.

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