Page 62 of Threadbound

He couldn’t help himself—he was drawn to Jamie Weaver like the proverbial moth to the flame—but he also wasn’t about to force Jamie into anything. He already owed Jamie his life. Twice. He didn’t think he would ever be able to repay that debt, but he also had the feeling—a premonition, almost—that if Jamie knew he was there, Bran would end up owing him so much more.

Because Jamie wouldn’t be able to stop himself from helping. And the only thing that could help Bran now was to complete the threadbond.

Which he was not going to do.

Not if it killed him, which it probably would.

Jamie’s heartwas in his throat, pounding both from the run and from having noticed the black shadow high in the sky and a little behind him. Too big for a common crow, the wrong shape for a vulture or an eagle.

It had to be Bran.

It was clear that Bran didn’t want Jamie knowing he was there.

Jamie almost hadn’t seen him—just a glimpse in his peripheral vision as he rounded the curve at the top of the crag. But he couldn’t look, because if he did, then Bran would fly away.

Jamie didn’t want him to do that.

It was stupid, Jamie knew that. Stupid that he was invested in Bran being near him—if anything, it should have been creepy. The notion that he was being followed, or stalked, if you asked Rob, by a fairy should have bothered him. Scared him, even.

But Jamie felt calmer than he had in weeks, his gait evening out and the breath coming deeper into his lungs as his whole body relaxed, just from knowing Bran was there.

Jamie didn’t understand why—no, that was a lie. He did understand why. He understood that this feeling of calm was the result of having his crush—because that’s what it was—notice him and be interested in him. Because he wasn’t just pining for someone who didn’t know or care about his existence.

Bran cared. Why, Jamie had no idea.

It probably wasn’t for a good reason, or at least not a reason that would end up being good for Jamie.

In between bouts of banging his head against the wall that was the thistle-burdock-knapweed-sea-holly, Jamie had tried to learn as much as he could about fairies. He’d looked in old folklore books—with the ostensible excuse that his thistle-burdock-knapweed-sea-holly might show up there somewhere—and online, trying to find out anything he could about fae, fairies, and shape-shifters.

What he’d learned was that there were a whole lot of contradictory stories about them.

Bran had used the wordsSluaghandUnseelie, so that’s what Jamie had used in his searches, but that had really only led him to a lot of fantasy novels and a few folklore sites.Fairieshad been more productive, particularly in the archives, and that was the word his momma had always used. It got him lots of names of creatures—pixies, brownies, red caps, and so on—and he’d even come across a mention of bookas, which were apparently more or less friendly domestic creatures who could either help around the house or, if they didn’t like you, break or hide things.

The one thing that nearly every place he looked said was that fairies, especially the Sluagh or Unseelie, weren’t to be trusted, not as far as you could throw them, but that they were also bound by rules.

You had to invite them in—like vampires. Well, Jamie was pretty sure he’d already botched that one by literally bringing Bran into his apartment. But an invitation to one fairy wasn’t an invitation to all of them. At least… he didn’t think so, although maybe the dish of milk and honey counted as an invitation to the bookas? At least bookas were supposed to be helpful, or at least harmless unless you did something to make them angry.

Shape-shifters, not so much. Although he hadn’t really been able to find any mention of bird-shifters, the few he’d found—dogs and cats and wolves, mostly—were predatory and highly dangerous. In fact, pretty much everything under the category ofSluaghorUnseeliewas dangerous or downright evil.

Of course, Jamie knew better than anyone that you had to take anything you found in folklore with a liberal dose of salt, given that they also thought that bathing in the moonlight would either give you or cure you of warts and that bleeding was the ideal treatment for pretty much everything else.

But all the books and pamphlets and websites agreed that fairy shifters were definitely not to be trusted and would probably steal your infants. Jamie didn’t have any infants, so he was pretty sure that’s not why Bran was interested in him, but he hadn’t been able to figure out what it was Bran wanted.

He wasn’t a virgin, so the idea of being a virgin sacrifice was out. No kids, so Bran wasn’t looking to exchange Jamie’s child for a changeling. Jamie didn’t have any goats or sheep or horses. He definitely wasn’t a maiden. And he didn’t have a hoard of silver and jewels hidden away under the floorboards of his apartment.

He also wasn’t a witch.

Jamie’s best guess is that Bran was interested in his research—that Jamie had found some book or recipe, maybe even the thistle-burdock-knapweed-sea-holly recipe, that did something the fairy wanted or needed. Or maybe the book itself was even from fairyland, which might explain why Jamie couldn’t figure out what the stupid recipe was even for. Then again, there wasn’t really a point in having a fairy recipe book in the human world—and several of the other ingredients were definitely things that Jamie could identify and access. And that made him wonder if things like hyssop and elderflower also grew in fairyland.

He could ask Bran—but he was pretending that he didn’t know Bran was following him.

Jamie continued on the path, turning away from the part of the crag that overlooked Edinburgh Castle, perched on the edge of the cliff above the rest of the city. As the sun rose higher, it painted the windows of the surrounding buildings—simple houses, apartments, and castles alike—a rosy gold. It was beautiful, in an odd, post-industrial kind of way. Especially surrounded as Jamie was with grasses, stones, and soil.

The contrast between the city built up over centuries and the rough and unrelenting grace of stone and earth made Jamiewonder what Bran thought of the contrast between human development and the natural world. It made him wonder whether the fae had built up their world—whether they had skyscrapers and factories that churned out strange mechanical monsters the way that humans did.

It was actually a little annoying how many questions Jamie had about fairies, or whatever they called themselves. About magic. About what their world was like.

And he couldn’t ask, because he was fairly certain that the minute he turned around and even looked at the raven carefully pacing just behind him, Bran would fly off. But Jamie drew a certain amount of comfort from the fact that Bran was there. He knew that was completely irrational, since Bran’s presence could actually be putting him in danger—or, hell,Brancould be a danger to Jamie, depending on what he needed or wanted… especially since well more than half of the things Jamie had found about fae suggested that whatever Bran was up to was probably going to end with Jamie dead, maimed, enslaved, trapped, or otherwise filled with regret about whatever it was that Bran was going to do to him.

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