Page 49 of Threadbound

Bran wasn’t just tired, and he knew it. This was bone-deep exhaustion, his limbs heavy, the pain in his side and his broken arm dull and almost disconnected from the rest of him, which felt—weird. Buzzy and a little like his veins were on fire…

Oh, Habetrot and Taranis, no.

It felt—like magic.

And that immediately explained why thegeàrd soilleirhad allowed Jamie to stop them. Because the damage had already been done.

And now he was in the horrifying position of dying—in Dunehame, of all places. If he could get back to Elfhame, tothe Court of Shades, then his father might be able to cure the magical poison he could feel slinking its way through his body.

Poison that no human doctor could do anything about. In fact, if he sickened further—no,whenhe sickened further, Jamie would, naturally, try to take him back to the hospital. And Bran would likely be too sick to stop him. And he’d never go home. He’d die in a human hospital, his magic slowly being corrupted in his blood and bones until it left him twisted and in agony.

He might have weathered it better if the threadbond had been completed, but—obviously—that hadn’t happened. So now he was dying, his magic was driving him insane, and it was simply a matter of which one happened first.

Bran was betting on dying.

But where a few months ago he might have just given in to the inevitable, he found he was no longer willing to accept death quite so blithely.

But the only way that wasn’t going to happen was if he could convince Jamie to help him get to Greyfriars Kirkyard. He didn’t have a lot of time, and he had no idea how in Lugh’s name he could possibly get Jamie to take him outside in his current condition to go anywhere but a hospital.

Unless…

He looked into Jamie’s impossibly clear blue eyes, saw the worry that hovered just beneath the waves like the shadow of an Uilbheist, impossible to comprehend from above the surface. Was he worried because he felt responsible for Bran, or because he felt something more?

Bran told himself to stop worrying about Jamie’s feelings—he could worry about those later, if he managed to convince Jamie to get him to the Gate at the Kirkyard.

“Are—Can I—What—” Jamie seemed flustered. Bran couldn’t really blame him. He also wasn’t quite sure how to even begin. “Do you?—”

“No, I dinna want to go back to the hospital,” Bran interrupted.

Jamie nodded, so it seemed that Bran had correctly guessed the question. “Then?—”

Bran drew in a deep breath, then noticed the smells of tomatoes and garlic and meat. “Can we start with dinner?” he asked. Maybe food would give him enough strength to be able to do the one thing he figured would successfully convince Jamie that he wasn’t mad—that he was what he was about to claim to be.

“Yeah,” Jamie smiled at him. “Yeah, we can start with dinner.”

Chapter

Twenty-One

“I’m not… human,” Bran said softly, having waited until Jamie set down their plates in the sink.

The expression Jamie turned to him was pretty much exactly what he expected. Confusion. Incredulity. Fear. “What—what do you mean?” Jamie asked, his voice carefully controlled, the way you might speak to a child or an elder in the grip of dementia.

Bran swallowed. The first part was out, and now he had to try to explain everything else.

“I’m not human,” he repeated. “I’m Sluagh.”

“You’re… slah?” The way Jamie said it was almost painful to Bran’s ears.

“S-L-U-A-G-H. Sluagh. In your language, at any rate.”

Jamie blinked. “What’s a… Sluagh?”

At least he said it better that time. “Some of your people have also called us the Unseelie.”

Jamie stared. “I don’t know what that is, either,” the half-breed said, his voice sounding stressed. “But why do you think you’re not human?”

Bran sighed. “Because I’mnothuman,” he repeated. “I wasna born human. And I wasna born here, in Dunehame.”

---