Page 77 of Threadbound

It also didn’t make sense with what he knew about Bran—the man, no,faewho was trying to learn how to make coffee, who paid for his food and slept on the floor, who had been a victim of violence, not its instigator. At least… Jamie had assumed Bran hadn’t started the violence that had left him bleeding and broken in the shadows of the crag.

Bran sighed, the kind of sigh you make when you have to explain something unpleasant. The kind of sigh Jamie’d heard before a breakup or before someone gave you bad news.

“The Sluagh are dark fae,” Bran essentially repeated. “We’re more comfortable at night, or in the shadows.”

“You’re awake now,” Jamie pointed out. And it was definitely daylight.

“Aye, and I dinna particularly like it,” came the response.

“So you’re nocturnal?”

Bran shrugged. “More or less. We’re more comfortable in the night, certainly. The Court of Shades comes alive at sundown, and most Sluagh sleep during the brightest hours, when we can.” Another sigh. “I willna lie to you, Jamie. Fae arna kind or gentle, Sluagh or Sidhe. Yourcrodh maraare banal enough?—”

“Mywhat?”

Bran let out a soft snort that might have been a laugh. “Crodh mara. They’re… livestock, of a sort, I suppose you’d say. Gentle, unless you frighten them, but only because they’re so massive.”

“Oh… ’Kay.” Jamie still had no idea what acrodh marawas, but he also wasn’t sure he really wanted to. Well, yes, hedidwant to, but in an academic sort of way, not a pet-one sort of way.

“Anyway,” Bran continued. “The Sluagh—thehost, in your tongue—are so called because your people believed we were a host of the damned undead.”

“But you’re not.” Jamie was pretty sure of that. Not certain, but pretty sure.

“Undead, no.” Bran’s lips twitched. “Thanks to you, I am definitely alive. But we are perhaps closer to death than you.”

Jamie frowned. “I don’t?—”

“I dinna mean I’m more likely to die sooner, although that may be true—” There was a wry twist to Bran’s lips. “—but that death is a more present part of our existence. We dinna fear it as you do. Or as the Sidhe do, even.”

“Why not?” Jamie couldn’t judge Bran for not being afraid of dead things—he worked in one of the largest pathology museums in the world and spent his dayssurroundedby bits of dead things.

Bran shrugged again. “Death is a part of life. The end of life, aye, but through death, we find meaning in life.”

“So being Sluagh or…”

“Sidhe,” Bran supplied.

“Sidhe,” Jamie repeated, “is like a religious belief?”

But Bran was shaking his head. “No, not in the way you mean. We do have different beliefs, but they’re tied towhatwe are. We are Sluagh or Sidhe first, and that shapes how we view the world.”

Jamie’s brow was deeply furrowed now. “You’re saying that how you think and what you believe is predetermined.”

“Aye, because it is.”

“Bullshit.”

Bran blinked, startled. “It isna?—”

“Yes, it is,” Jamie insisted, features set in a scowl. “That’s like saying that because I was born with an X and a Y chromosome, I have to like red meat and football and having sex with women.”

The dark slashes of Bran’s eyebrows rose in elegant twin arches. “And you dinna?”

“I mean, meat is fine, sometimes,” Jamie replied, flushing. “But no, I don’t much like… the other things.”

“I also like meat.” Bran sounded amused. “Although I dinna care much for football, either.”

“Are Sluagh supposed to like football?” Jamie asked him, torn between feeling annoyed and enjoying the banter.

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