Page 83 of Threadbound

“Why not?”

“Thegeàrd soilleirare Sidhe—they belong to the Sunlit Court.”

“They were out at night when they attacked you,” Jamie pointed out.

“It isn’t that they canna move at night, but they are weaker because their magic is linked to the sun,” Bran explained. “But that link is weaker in Dunehame—in your world—so they’re less limited by darkness, just as I’m less limited by daylight.”

It made about as much sense as anything else, Jamie supposed, although the reminder that Bran wasn’t even remotely as human as he looked wasn’t helping to calm Jamie down. Jamie squeezed his eyes shut again as something that might have been an insect or might have been a large rodent—it was thesizeof a raccoon, even if it did look like some sort of really messed up spider-rat-cricket-hybrid thing.

“Afeurcoisichecanna hurt you,” Bran said gently.

“A what?”

“Feurcoisiche.” Bran let out a soft hum. “Grass-walker.”

“Grass-walker,” Jamie repeated. That didn’t sound even half as terrifying as the damned thing looked. “It eats grass?”

“No,” Bran answered, and his tone told Jamie that whatever the grass-walker ate, it wasn’t something vegetal. “But it doesna eat the living.”

Oh, great. Jamie tried not to think too hard about that. But he supposed that since he was alive, it wasn’t something he needed to worry about right at that particular moment. Well. As long as hestayedalive. Which brought his mind back to why they were in fairy land—Elfhame—whatever—to begin with. Because someone had tried to make himunalive.

The next thing Jamie spied through the grass looked considerably less like it ate carrion, and it definitely didn’t eat grass, either. There were claws and teeth and too much darkness. A rattling sound—but not like any rattle snake Jamie had ever heard—accompanied its passage, and Bran turned to narrow his gaze through the grasses.

“Doesthateat the living?” Jamie asked him, afraid he already knew the answer.

“Eventually,” came the response, and there was an edge to it. “Although you’ll have wished it dinna for a while before then.”

Jamie triedveryhard not to actually think about what Bran must have meant. Because?—

Nope.

Jamie struggled to slow his breath, forcing his eyes back to the jewels that were Bran’s. “Can—Can we go?” He swallowed. “To wherever it is that we’re going.”

“Aye, but youmustdo as I tell you.”

Jamie nodded quickly.

Bran’s expression was deadly serious. “You shouldna step off the path. You shouldna touch anything unless I tell you it willna hurt you.” Jamie nodded when Bran paused. “You shouldna take anything from anyone who isna me or someone I trust.”

“And who do you trust?” Jamie asked, becoming increasingly nervous the more Bran spoke. His momma had told him not to accept things from fairies, but he’d already broken that—with Bran. And Bran claimed that he owed Jamie a debt he would never be able to fully repay. If Jamie’s momma had been right, fairies—fae—couldn’tlie, but they could stretch or manipulate or omit truth. But Jamie really didn’t think Bran was doing any of those. He couldn’t explainwhy, but he couldn’t help but trust Bran.

“My family,” Bran answered. “The other members of theNeach-Cogaidh.”

“The what?” Jamie asked.

“Sworn guardians, knights, you might call us—them,” Bran corrected himself, because even though no one had demanded his resignation, he knew he was no longer strong enough to serve as one of them. It made his stomach roil. “It will be clear,” he told Jamie. “Come.” He stood, then turned and began to pick his way down the steep path from the Gate to the Court of Shades. A glance over his shoulder told Bran that Jamie was following, his full lower lip trapped between his teeth as he tried not to fall, but also not to look at anything but Bran.

It might have been funny—and endearing—if it weren’t critically important that Jamie not misstep. Because he had no idea how to handle himself—how to keep himself safe from the predators that occupied the night of Elfhame, the dangers that lurked beneath every rock and in every crevasse, to say nothing of the corners of the Court of Shades itself. Bran could handle himself—and had his magic still been stable, he wouldn’t have thought anything about also protecting Jamie.

But perhaps… Bran dared not think it. Because if he knew anything about the way the vagaries of the gods worked, even thinking that the threadbond might be enough to let him continue asNeach-Cogaidhwould all but guarantee that hewould not. Or perhaps his thoughts and prayers didn’t matter at all, and the Fates had already cast that thread—whichever way it went.

Habetrot had never been the goddess to whom Bran had felt himself drawn, anyway—he was no healer, and the complexities of weaving and the Fates were beyond him. Spells he could manage, death and violence, deception and trickery. Lugh, god of tricksters, and Taranis, goddess of death, had always been the deities to whom most of his prayers had been sent. He drew upon the gods as he needed them, of course—everyone did. So he had called upon Habetrot and Dunatis… more frequently in recent months, it was true. But the others—Condatis, the god of meetings, and Dahud-Ahes, goddess of pleasure—were less a part of his life.

Bran supposed perhaps they should have been. It was Condatis, after all, who had tied him to Jamie—or so the legends had it, even if it was supposedly Habetrot who provided the threads. Bran was fairly certain that Lugh had probably had more to do with the selection of Bran’s bondmate than any of the other gods. Only a trickster god would tie him to a half-breed human with no noticeable magic…

Although the trow Jamie’d begged him to release had said he was looking for a blond humanwitch.

Bran supposed it was possible that the Sidhe King simply assumed that Bran’s bondmate would be a witch. Or that the Sunlit Court had somehow been misinformed… But both were very uncharacteristic of Darach mac Craobh-na-Beatha. The King of the Sidhe typically did nothing without having full knowledge—and he wasn’t particularly scrupulous about how he obtained that information.

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