Page 7 of Threadbound

But he had not expected to find the half-breed in Edinburgh.

Elfhame and Dunehame, his father had explained when he was a child, lay over one another, reflected like a mirror and layered like weft and warp. There were places where the threads passed through one another, tiny gaps between one space and the next where those with the power could cross between them.

The gateway closest to his home in Elfhame crossed into Dunehame in Edinburgh’s beating stone heart.

One day, he’d found the half-breed practically on his doorstep.

Once, he had romanticized the idea of the threadbond, told himself that he and his bondmate would become friends.Perhaps more than friends. It was an exciting story to tell himself when he was a child, even as he began to mature.

It was much less exciting when it appeared imminent.

With a sigh, Bran forced himself to meet theBean Nighe’s seemingly sightless gaze. “I dinna wish to give up what I have,” he answered.

“Your final wish?” she asked him, apparently satisfied with the results of his soul-searching.

“I wish for my father to be victorious in his cause.” A selfless wish. They were dangerous, he knew, but so were selfish wishes. The problem with wishes of all kinds was that one never really knew the cost.

TheBean Nighecackled again, and it sent shivers down Bran’s spine.

“And what is it, child, that will make giving all that you have worthwhile?”

He stared, having no idea how to answer her. This question, however, was more like what he had expected. A riddle. Something difficult. In that sense, at least, it was a relief.

TheBean Nighelaughed again and waved one long-fingered hand, threads of spidersilk trailing from her gnarled and claw-tipped fingers.

“I know you have no answer for me, child. But the question remains—and so, too, will the wish, unfulfilled, until you can give me an answer.” She bared her teeth in a smile that opened up like the earth over an ancient grave.

“Your path diverges, child of stone and air. Step one way, and you will bleed your life out on the ground. Step another, and you will be torn asunder by a failed war. A third, and your name will hover on the breath of your heart’s deepest desire as you pass into peaceful eternity.”

Bran gaped at her. TheBean Nighepromised death—that he had known. But she had given him not a single death, itsappointed time obscured by riddles as he had expected, but three, the path in front of him unclear and uncertain. Bran, who liked certainty and predictability, had been promised not the end of his days, but three ends at three times and in three ways. Neither certain nor predictable.

He supposed it was no less than he deserved for his attempt to meddle with Fate.

True to her word,theBean Nighehad taught him how to stabilize his magic. True to her nature, it had been by suppressing it, which was next to useless as far as Bran was concerned.

She’d laughed at him when he’d realized what her herbal tisane would do. He’d taken it anyway, because sometimes his magic would surge painfully, and on those occasions, he was grateful for anything that made it stop.

Before theBean Nighe, he’d been getting drunk, but that came with terrible headaches and worse decision-making.

The tisane at least reduced both the headache and the regret.

It also left him weak and trembling for days.

And when it had become all but impossible to hide his condition from his family—especially his father’s knowing expression—he’d fled to Dunehame, where his connection to his erratic magic was dulled without the shaking impotence of theBean Nighe’s herbs and charms.

So here he sat in a tree, watching the glass doors to a library and waiting to see what unmitigatedly boring thing the half-breed human would do next, alternately trying to convince himself to just kidnap the damn creature and get it over with or give up on the whole damn thing.

Chapter

Four

It was surprisingly warm and sunny when Jamie got up to go to work. Normally, Jamie liked mornings. On running days, he’d get up early enough that it was still cool—or cooler, at any rate—while on rest days, he could take the time to relax and drink his coffee. Read, if he had something he was researching, or maybe get a little bit of writing done. Unfortunately, his tiny apartment didn’t have much in the way of airflow, so it was a bit cramped and stuffy, which meant he hadn’t slept well. Not that summer wasn’t usually warm and sunny, but it was uncomfortably warmer than usual. Edinburgh didn’t get as hot and muggy as Maynardville, but after three years, Jamie was starting to get spoiled.

He pulled on sunglasses as he stepped out into the morning brightness, then headed down the street toward Surgeons’ Hall. Jamie didn’t notice the unusually large raven perched on the rooftop across the street, and he also didn’t notice when it took flight and followed him, its wings beating upward in the rising heat from the sun reflecting off the streets.

It was fairly easy for Bran to hover over pavement in the updraft created by baking tarmac and cobblestones. Much as he hated them—preferring grass and stone and earth—at least therewas some amount of convenience in being able to hover as the stupid human half-breed made his meandering way to whatever other building he was going to.

Bran didn’t understand the human obsession with buildings, particularly buildings made of dead wood and brick and steel without even the feel of growing things or flowing water. The fae, whether Sluagh or Sidhe, built in harmony with nature, weaving their constructions with the earth, the sea, the trees, and the sky. Bran was half-convinced that humans deliberately flouted the paths of nature, cutting off rivers and threads of life-giving power on purpose, just to spite themselves and Fate.

---