Page 143 of Threadbound

“Bollocks,” came the response. “He’s a Weaver.”

Jamie grew even more confused when Bran began to laugh, the sound a little hysterical. The room turned to look at the smaller fae, who was shaking his head, dark hair hanging damp in front of his face. “I dinna realize your name was na’ just a name,” he explained, which cleared up exactly nothing.

“What?” It was Rob who said it.

“Weaver,” Bran repeated. “Jamie’s ancestors must have been weaving witches.” Bran looked up, meeting Jamie’s blue eyes with his own vivid green. “Jamieis a weaving witch.”

“I am not!” Jamie protested automatically.

Mad Ally gestured at Bran. “Did ye make that trinket?” he asked.

“Trinket?”

“Aye, he did,” Bran answered.

“What were ye thinking when ye did?”

“What?”

Mad Ally didn’t repeat the question, just arched one eyebrow and waited.

Jamie felt his cheeks catch fire. “I—that I wanted Bran to be safe. Unhurt.”

The wulver flicked his wrist, sending magic shooting across the room at Bran without even looking.

Bran instinctively lifted an arm—the one that had the green loops of Jamie’s knotted bracelet around it—and the magic fizzled out around it.

Bran started laughing again.

“Why is thatfunny?” Jamie demanded, becoming angry as well as frightened.

“It wasna enough to actually hurt me,” Bran assured him. “And it would have if he had meant to, but this ‘trinket,’ as Madadh Allaidh called it, blocked a little of the magic.”

“It…”

Bran shook his head again. “I should ha’ known,” he said softly. “The scarves always make you feel warmer than they should, the blankets safe and comfortable, even on a hot night.”

Mad Ally’s lips quirked. “Nell has—had a special magic,” he said quietly. “Ye never would ha’ known it, but for the fact that a scarf kept for twenty-seven years has narry a loose thread.”

“I don’t understand.” Jamie felt lost, semi-hysterical.

“You’re a weaving witch, Jamie,” Bran said softly, again, standing and crossing the room to take Jamie’s hands. His were still cold. “You knot and weave because of the magic in your blood. And what you make has magic in it.”

“But—”

“What you’re thinking of, what you wish for as you work, goes into the very threads of what you weave,” Bran continued. “You knotted protection into this.” He held up his arm. “As your mother made warmth and comfort into her scarves and blankets.” He offered Jamie a small smile. “The trow was right—you are a witch.”

Jamie swallowed. “But what does thatmean?”

“Right now, it means that it’s your blood we need. After that—it means whatever you want it to.”

It was nearly midnight,and Bran and Mad Ally had spent the better part of the last hour arguing about whether they should find a gate or make a new one. Jamie was sitting on the bed he’d shared with Bran, knees drawn up to his chest while Trixie gently rubbed his back.

Rob had found a bottle of whisky somewhere and was on his second, very liberal glass. Jamie’s sat beside him, mostly untouched. Part of him wanted to down the whole thing—felt like that was about the only way he was going to be able to cope with the fact that hisfatherwas the fae equivalent of a bloody werewolf, for the love of God, and he was some sort of witch on top of that—and his momma had also been a witch.

Between that, Bran half-drowning himself, and the additional fact that they were about to magically walk into the middle of a war… Jamie felt like alcohol consumption, even to excess, would have been fully justified. But he also didn’t wantto walk into a magical war drunk, because that seemed like an absolute recipe for disaster.

So instead he slowly sipped at the whisky, worrying about the impending magic that Bran and hisfather—for the love of God—were about to do because it was likely to drain Bran’s already weak body even further and because he had no idea what trying to pass through a portal that wasn’t a gate would do to the rest of them.

---