Threadbound, p.2
Threadbound, page 2
Above him, the raven circled a few more times, then winged its way out over Edinburgh. Maybe back to St. Giles or off to some other roost where it could survey the stone and glass and steel of the city from on high.
With a last long, deep breath, Jamie turned and began to head back down Crow Hill, following the path’s continued loop across Holyrood Park toward the ruins of St. Anthony’s, then back to his tiny apartment over the thrift store. The last few blocks were always the worst, dodging tourists and locals alike, and he usually gave up trying to maintain any sort of decent pace while playing slalom with people and vehicles.
Today was no different, and he ended up walking the last few blocks before taking the two flights of stairs up at a run.
Sweat cooled on his skin as he fumbled his keys out of his pocket, then unlocked the door to an apartment that had definitely seen better days, but would probably also see worse. It was small, with an alcove on one side that held his bed and a small night stand. The main room had one window under which he’d put a table that served as his desk, along with an office chair. He also had a more casual chair and ottoman purchased from the downstairs thrift store. There was a third folding chair, leaning against the wall in the back of the kitchen closet, that served either in the event that he had guests or, more often, he needed to change a light bulb.
Nearly everything was secondhand, bought from thrift stores or liberated from dumpsters on the days that the students moved out of their dorms and apartments at the end of term. Jamie might have gotten funding for tuition, but the research stipend they paid him barely covered rent.
Not that he could really complain. He was able to work part-time at the Surgeons’ Hall Museums to make a little extra money so that he didn’t have to budget his food quite so tightly and even had enough for the occasional purchase of something more fun, like going to a movie or buying the brightly colored packages of embroidery floss and macramé cord that he used to soothe himself while he thought.
His mother had knitted and crocheted, and she’d taught Jamie when he was young how to take the yarn and use the little hooks to create complicated knots that eventually turned into things like shawls and scarves and blankets. He didn’t really have the patience for crocheting blankets—as much as he loved the ones he had from his mother—so he stuck to smaller things he could sell online so that once a month or so he could really splurge and buy a bottle of whisky or spend a night out with some of the other doctoral students or buy the makings of a really nice dinner.
He made little things—bracelets, little decorative ornaments, keychains. Nothing big or fancy. He didn’t think of himself as an artist—just a guy who had restless hands who figured he might as well get something out of all the knots and braids his fingers twisted together while he watched murder mysteries on the BBC.
His plan for the night was exactly that—twisting together a couple bracelets that had been ordered online while watching Midsomer Murders and eating a bowl of pasta. It might not be exciting, but it suited him.
Chapter
Three
It had been a good couple of weeks in the online-bracelet business, so Jamie stopped off at the coffee shop on the corner for a lavender latte, one of his favorite things, but which he only let himself get about once a month.
He drew in a deep breath, enjoying the scent of the floral coffee before taking a sip as he walked through the warm summer air, headed for that great bastion of graduate students everywhere: the library.
In order to justify splurging on the latte, he’d made himself a nice, healthy, affordable lunch of cut-up veggies and hummus in a little re-usable dish along with some pita bread and an apple. It wasn’t particularly decadent, but Jamie wasn’t really that kind of guy. Although he was pretty sure he knew what Bill would have to say about his lunch.
Where’s the meat, boy? You some kind of fucking rabbit?
It wasn’t that he didn’t like meat—he loved fish, and a good burger now and then was great. But meat was expensive, and since he didn’t need it, he usually didn’t bother.
Not that fresh produce wasn’t also expensive, but Jamie had always figured that vitamins were things he should probably be getting somehow. That, and he liked carrots and celery, which were actually pretty cheap as far as fresh veggies went.
His messenger bag bumped against his hip as he walked, threading his way through tourists milling around the streets near campus. The University was integrated right into the middle of the old part of the city, barely a handful of blocks from the Royal Mile, so there were generally tourists everywhere, either scoping out the campus or lost looking for something else.
Every day somebody stopped him to ask directions, which he was willing to provide, although people usually looked surprised at the Southern US accent that came out of his mouth.
He got that at work, too. There it was a bit more irritating, since there was usually at least one person every week or two who asked for a different tour guide because Jamie wasn’t “authentically Scottish.” Why they thought you had to be from Scotland to give a tour of Surgeons’ Hall, he didn’t know—it’s not like the knowledge of body parts or the history of medicine were exclusive to Scots. And Jamie’s research made him more than qualified to talk about it.
But some tourists apparently signed on for an experience that only involved tour guides who were from Scotland.
They were usually American, and Jamie took perverse delight in having them assigned to Trixie Baker’s tours, since Trixie wasn’t from Scotland, either—she was from Manchester, England, but most Americans couldn’t tell the difference between Trixie’s accent and Rob Taylor’s, and Rob had been born and bred in Glasgow before coming down to Edinburgh get his MFA.
Rob worked days in Surgeons’ Hall and nights over at Fringe across the street—Jamie wasn’t sure when, exactly, Rob slept, but the baristas at both Black Medicine and 1505 knew his order by heart.
Jamie had promised to come to one of the shows next week, and he would, even though he couldn’t actually remember which one it was or what it was supposed to be about. It was on Thursday, he knew that much. He figured he’d show up and whatever it was would be a pleasant surprise. Or maybe just an interesting one.
Rob loved things that he called avant garde and Jamie called just plain weird. They were always interesting, though, and sometimes Jamie really enjoyed them, even if he walked away with very little understanding of what he’d just experienced. His mother had always said it was important to experience things, even if you didn’t understand them. Jamie tried to take that advice to heart.
He preferred nature and books to Rob’s performance art, but Rob was a good friend. Besides, a week or two after Fringe closed, he’d stuff Trixie and Jamie in his car and drive them somewhere into the highlands for a hike. That was for Jamie.
Trixie was a concerts-and-club kind of girl, and every year for the past three years she’d dragged them to some late-night, usually expensive and always very loud venue that left Jamie’s ears ringing for two days. There wasn’t a schedule for Trixie’s “event”—she’d look at the venue calendars and pick one, and Jamie never knew when it was coming.
It didn’t matter. It also didn’t matter that Jamie didn’t really get the appeal of Trixie’s concerts, either. The people at them were fascinating—sometimes he swore they were barely human, dressed in leather and rubber and metal studs and feathers and who knew what else. There was beauty to their costumes—he wasn’t sure what else to call them—and sometimes he even took inspiration from them for some of his macramé designs.
The three of them had all started their graduate work at the same time and met at a new student mixer because they hadn’t meshed with anyone else.
It was an odd, kind of sad way to start a friendship, Jamie supposed, but it worked for them.
Jamie was very much an introvert and didn’t mind spending most of his time on his own. And if he needed help, he knew he could call either Rob or Trixie, and they’d figure it out. They’d done as much for each other a handful of times over the past three years when one or another of them had changed apartments or acquired a couch that was too big to move alone or when they were sick and needed someone to bring tea or soup.
It wasn’t a glamorous life, but it worked.
Sure, Jamie had days or, more often, nights when he would stare out at the lights of the city or the dimness of the distant stars and feel a kind of impossible emptiness somewhere inside his chest, but… who didn’t?
He had friends, a job he liked well enough, and a career path to follow. No one was threatening him or beating him, and he got to make his own decisions.
And it was a far sight better than Jamie’s life had been back in Maynardville, so he was content.
Mostly.
Bran mac Cairn was anything but content.
He was a Sluagh prince, a powerful fae in the Court of Shades, and he was stuck babysitting a Lugh-cursed half-breed human.
Well, not babysitting, exactly, since it wasn’t like he was responsible for feeding or taking care of the damn thing. But the half-breed was bound to him. Tied to his soul by their shared first moment of breath. Their lives were intertwined—whether Bran liked it or not. Which he most definitely did not.
Especially since he was supposed to convince the half-breed to complete the binding begun the instant they had both been born. To come with him back to Elfhame and perform the ritual that would even more permanently link their souls together.
There was very little Bran wanted to do less.
But the magic of Fate would not—could not—be denied.
The connection between them itched. Not like a healing wound or a rash from getting too close to something he shouldn’t have. But the irritation, the constant awareness, the need to do something…
It was also painfully clear that the half-breed had no idea there was anything missing or amiss in his life whatsoever. He was oblivious to the sensation—at least Bran assumed he must be, since he blithely went about his stupid mortal existence without seeming to have a care in the world. It was as though Dunatis himself had set up a wall around the man protecting him from harm or discomfort. Or awareness that there was anything beyond the tangible, boring, mundane world he lived in.
Bran ruffled his ink-dark feathers, perched on one of the larger branches of a tree in the park across from the library where the stupid half-breed spent a great deal of his time. Bran didn’t actually object to the half-breed reading books—he was fond of books himself. That was in fact one of the few things that didn’t irritate him about the half-breed.
There were so many that did.
For one thing, the man slouched. He was tall enough to stand head and shoulders above most of the humans around him, but he folded in on himself as though hiding from the world. It was a marker of weakness. Of cowardice.
Bran hated both.
The whole reason he was supposed to bring the half-breed back to Elfhame was because his own power was flagging—without it, he risked not only his own safety, but the balance between the courts of the Sidhe and Sluagh.
As though the damn balance weren’t already horribly off-kilter, which was a not-insignificant part of the problem. If it had been just about his own strength, Bran could have dealt with it. But other people—his family—were relying on him. On his power.
Bran shuffled a little on his branch, uneasy.
His power needed his bondmate, but his bondmate was pathetic. And so very human.
Humans were… well, as far as Bran was concerned, humans were pretty much entirely useless. Noisy, smelly—very smelly, and not usually in a good way—and destructive. Not that destruction didn’t have its place—all things did. But humans were wanton in their exploitation of the world around them, unconcerned by and uncaring for the other lives trapped or ruined by their constant bustling consumption.
They paved over grass, polluted the water, and filled the air with horns and noxious gasses. And what was done in Dunehame, this world of humans, had ramifications in Elfhame. And vice versa, of course. But his people weren’t blundering about destroying the world just to create more cars and televisions and cellular phones.
Bran didn’t particularly want to think about the consequences of having a half-human as a bondmate. How would the half-breed’s human blood corrupt Bran’s magic? Did the half-breed even have magic at all? Not all half-breeds did, and with his terrible luck…
Bran sank deeper into his own feathers, working himself into to a good sulk.
He was entirely convinced that it was a much better choice to not bind himself to the half-breed, come what may.
His father saw things differently.
Cairn mac Darach, Sluagh prince, nephew to the King of the Sluagh and eighth son of the King of the Sidhe, thought his youngest child was being stubborn and unreasonable, and had told him so. Repeatedly. He’d also reminded Bran that the longer he went after his twenty-fifth birthday without completing the threadbond, the more erratic and weak his power would become.
Bran had put it off, not really believing that his magic could truly be tied, or at least not that strongly, to some half-breed in some far-away place in Dunehame.
And then things had started to go… not wrong, exactly. Just not right, either.
A missed step when sparring with his siblings. Easily dismissed as the result of not enough sleep or the distracting glint of light off metal or glass.
His fingers fumbling when he tried to tie a charm or untie a curse.
A little extra fatigue after a shift from one form to another.
Things he hadn’t even noticed until one day he did. And once he noticed them, he couldn’t ignore them anymore. His power was weakening, flickering. And he didn’t like it one bit.
The only solution—as far as he’d been able to find—was to complete the threadbond. To cement the link between himself and the half-breed so that it was more than just a single, quivering golden thread.
If he could have snapped it instead, he’d have taken that option. But, no. To sever the thread between bondmates was to drive them both to madness and possibly death.
He’d looked it up.
He’d looked a lot of things up.
Legends, histories, charms, forbidden spells. He’d even gone so far as to seek out the Bean Nighe.
The Bean Nighe had laughed at him.
And then given him answers he didn’t particularly like at all.
Her body, twisted like a tree struggling to grow around a massive stone, settled into a crouch before the green flames of the fire, her massive feet clawed and webbed where they clutched the dirt.
“Speak, child of stone and air.”
“I seek to rid myself of the threadbond, Bean Nighe,” he told her, carefully and deliberately holding his voice steady.
“Then you seek madness and an early grave, child. I will not grant such a wish.” She bared teeth the color of cloudy amber and spring moss at him. “Such wishes are more easily accomplished with a quick blade or a liberal dose of hemlock, should that be your chosen path.”
Bran might hate the bond, but he wasn’t suicidal. “No, and your honesty does me honor, Bean Nighe.”
“But you have used one wish,” she cautioned him.
Of course he had. That was the way of things.
“And I must have the answer to my first question,” she pronounced.
“Very well. Ask.”
“Why do you wish to shed the threads of Fate?”
He blinked, startled. He hadn’t expected such a… normal question. “My bondmate is a human half-breed. I have no desire to be bound to such a creature.”
The Bean Nighe stared at him, blinking her white eyes. If she had thoughts or judgment about his answer, she gave no indication.
“Your second wish.”
“If I canna be rid of the bond, then I wish to stabilize my magic without it.”
A cackle like the scraping of claws down rough stone. “There are ways, child. Ways that I can teach you. I will do this, if you answer my second question.”
He was satisfied with this. “Ask,” he said, pleased.
“What is it you fear about the human, child?”
That one surprised him. He didn’t fear humans, especially not this one. “I dinna,” he said.
“You do,” she countered. “Speak truth, or your wish will go unfulfilled.”
Bran frowned, then forced himself to think back on his few encounters with the half-breed to find even a trace of what might be taken as fear.
He remembered, when he was young, wanting to see the creature who held the other end of the glimmering thread he saw sometimes out of the corner of his eye, slipping from just below his breast bone and extending away—far, far away.
He asked Cairn mac Darach where the thread would lead, and his father told him that it would take him to Dunehame, where very few people—hardly any at all—had magic.
He had begged his father to take him there, to show him the person on the other side of his gleaming thread.
It was another three years before Cairn reluctantly agreed.
The other boy Bran had seen hadn’t known him. Had thought him exactly the same as the other birds that flew from branch to branch in the dingy heat of his school’s summer playground. The harsh, hot metal of the playground equipment had been painful on Bran’s sensitive feet so used to the give of wood and grass and the cool of stone.
The boy had made small noises at him, a tsking sound in his throat that Bran didn’t understand until the boy had held out a small piece of food.
Bran’s bird-eyes had watched him, uncertain.
This creature was not bright and brilliant like the thread. He was dull, flat, with pale hair and cheeks discolored by sun and something that might have been a healing bruise.
