Page 44 of Threadbound

But there was no way Jamie could know any of that. And no way Bran could tell him.

He also couldn’t lie and tell Jamie that he wasn’t in any danger, because he almost certainly was.

Bran looked up and met Jamie’s beautiful blue-sky eyes with his own moss-green ones. “Aye,” he replied after far longer than was probably appropriate. “They did.”

“Why?”

Bran took another bite of the casserole, which was odd, but still fairly tasty, as a means of stalling while he tried to think of a way to truthfully answer Jamie’s question. “They want to get to my father,” he finally replied.

“So, like a mob thing?”

Bran’s fork paused again. “Mob… thing?” He had no idea what that meant.

“You know, mafia? Organized crime?”

Bran was starting to wish he’d spent more time paying attention to human history, or possibly television, since he wasn’t sure if this was one of those fictional things humans made up or an actual thing that humans had also made up.

“Gangs?” Jamie asked.

At least it was something Bran understood, even if it wasn’t quite the right comparison. “Aye, a bit like that.”

“But not actually?”

“No… Not exactly. We’re not trying to sell weapons or drugs, and neither are they, as far as I know.” He thought for a moment, trying to come up with a way to alleviate the obvious confusion on Jamie’s features. “It is… more ideological differences than territorial disputes.”

That had not helped, because now Jamie looked even more confused. “Ideological?”

Bran sighed. At least he was getting a sense for just how terribly any attempt to explain magic or the existence of fae and Elfhame would go. “About who is loyal to whom?”

“So… like the Yakuza? Except with fewer guns?”

Bran had no idea, but if it made sense to Jamie, he was going to go with it. “Aye, close enough.”

Jamie nodded, the confusion smoothing out of his forehead. “So they just want to kill you because of who your dad chose to follow?”

It wasn’t entirely inaccurate. “Aye.”

“What do they want your dad to do?” Jamie asked.

“Do?”

“Yeah. Like, if they’re trying to get to him, what do they think—what do they want from him?”

It was a good question, even if it was one that Bran hadn’t ever asked himself. Because why would he? Thegeàrd soilleirwere trying to kill him to hurt his father, and they didn’t need areason other than the fact that they were thegeàrd soilleirand the Sidhe King commanded it.

But even if thegeàrdwere only acting on orders, it did cause Bran to wonder why, exactly, Darach mac Craobh-na-Beatha wanted his own son dead. It had simply been a fact his whole life—that the Sidhe King sought to kill the healer who could keep Cuileann mac Eug from death’s door.

“I dinna know,” he answered Jamie. “But they—or others like them—have been trying to kill him since I was a child.” His elder sister had been killed by thegeàrdwhen he was seventeen, ambushing her without provocation. Others had died, seemingly of illness or accidents, and thegeàrdhad been suspected, but their guilt went unproven in most cases. Corraich’s death, unquestionably committed by thegeàrd, was the beginning of more open and acknowledged war.

Not that there hadn’t been hostility between the Court of Shades and the Sunlit Court for many centuries—but before the attack that left Corraich dead, there hadn’t been obvious and direct violence for nearly fifteen hundred years. Longer than any of Bran’s siblings had been alive. Even now, skirmishes were waged on the fringes of the Courts, this agent or that soldier would be found dead, an enclave of Sluagh or Sidhe creatures utterly slaughtered.

As much as Bran believed the Sluagh were in the right, that Darach mac Craobh-na-Beatha had ruled hard and long enough, Bran could not and did not pretend that his people were any less violent or cruel than the Sidhe. Nor did he doubt that many Sidhe thought their king justified in his actions, just as Bran thought of his father and great-uncle.

He also couldn’t explain any of that to Jamie, at least not in terms that Jamie would be able to accept or understand. Bran put another forkful of casserole in his mouth, enjoying thesmooth creaminess of the sauce and noodles. Then he noticed that Jamie had mostly just been pushing his around in his bowl.

“They willna come back soon, I do not think,” he said softly. “And they will avoid the city.”

Jamie looked up at him, his blue eyes worried. “Do you live in the city?”

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