Threadbound, p.37
Threadbound, page 37
Jamie’s blue eyes flew open, and he stared down at Bran. “Wha-what did you do?” he whispered.
Green eyes searched his, a small furrow between them over the bridge of Bran’s nose. “I dinna do anything,” the fae answered. “You can feel what I feel through the threadbond.”
“But—”
Bran’s lips quirked. “It would be more accurate to say I stopped doing something,” he said softly.
“Stopped doing what?” Jamie asked.
“Fighting it.”
“Fighting it?” This conversation wasn’t helping Jamie’s confusion.
Bran sighed, although he didn’t move his hand from Jamie’s and didn’t step away. “Aye. I’ve not wanted this bond for so long, I dinna know how to accept it.”
“You fought the threadbond?” Jamie felt hurt, although he tried to keep that from his voice or expression.
Bran winced a little anyway. “I am sorry,” the fae murmured. “I dinna know you. And I was afraid.”
“Of what?” Jamie asked.
“Losing who I thought I was. What I thought I wanted.” Bran looked up and offered him a small smile. “I was wrong.”
“You didn’t want that?” Jamie asked.
“I canna be what I am not,” Bran replied, his voice quiet, but not sad. “And I canna be what Fate will not allow.”
“But I made you sick,” Jamie said softly.
“No.” This time, Bran’s voice was firm. “You dinna make me sick. I made myself sick, refusing to accept what Fate had destined for me.”
“Refusing to be bound to me, you mean.” That hurt, too.
There was pain now in Bran’s green eyes. “I am sorry,” he breathed, his hand tightening around Jamie’s where he held it against his chest. “I shouldna have done so.”
“Because it made you sick.”
“Because I hurt us both.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly. Bran had never physically hurt him. Jamie hadn’t been sick the way the fae had.
But Bran’s expression grew sad. “Please dinna lie to me,” he said, and there was disappointment and something more in his voice.
“I’m not,” Jamie replied. “I’m fine.”
Bran sighed. “I can feel it, Jamie,” he murmured. “Along the bond.”
“Then why—” Jamie cut himself off, biting his own lip. Why did you push me away?
I was afraid, came the answer, carried on impossible and invisible threads of gold from Bran’s heart to his own.
Jamie swallowed, staring down into green eyes that held both fear and wonder, the same as his own.
I’m not afraid now.
I am.
“Dinna be afraid,” Bran breathed.
Jamie swallowed. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” he whispered. “And I don’t know how to not be scared.”
Trust me.
Bran let go of his hand and reached out, running his fingers over Jamie’s cheek. “I was keeping the bond from being what it could be,” he said. “Blocking its magic. I stopped.”
“Why?”
A small smile flitted over his lips. “Because I realized how much I need you.”
“For your magic?”
“No.” Just you. Bran pulled Jamie’s lips back to his own, and the moment they met, Jamie leaned into the kiss, his hands on Bran’s hips pulling him close. Jamie didn’t mean to give in, to let desire rush through his blood, to claim Bran’s mouth. Mine.
Bran didn’t resist him, instead melting into Jamie’s arms. Yours. Jamie didn’t shy from the bond this time, instead lifting Bran off his feet, turning so that he could set the smaller fae on the edge of the counter, his lips almost bruising with their force.
Heat burned between them, desire crashing through Jamie’s blood with a force that made his knees weak and his sweatpants uncomfortably tight. He tore himself away from Bran’s mouth. “God, how do you do this to me?”
Bran’s hands slid up under his shirt, and Jamie groaned at the sensation of Bran’s hands on his skin. “I canna help myself,” the fae murmured as he pulled Jamie between his legs.
Jamie pulled back far enough to look into those bottomless green eyes. “Is this magic?”
“No more than the sun or moon or sea,” came the answer.
To Jamie, Bran seemed just as inevitable and impossible to resist.
Bran pulled at his shirt, and Jamie peeled it off, groaning when his fingers met nothing but skin when he reached out for Bran again. “God, your skin,” he breathed, burying his face in the crook where Bran’s neck met his shoulder.
Need you. Hands pushed at the waistband of Jamie’s sweats, and he shimmied a little to help Bran push them down, freeing his already-hard-and-aching cock.
“How do you do this to me?” he asked again, not really expecting an answer.
“How do you?” came the breathless reply.
Jamie knew he should be more gentle. Knew that he’d already been rough enough with Bran, but his body didn’t seem to care. He wanted desperately to bury himself in Bran’s body, to lose himself in Bran’s heat.
More.
Jamie groaned. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he gasped out as Bran’s strong legs hooked behind his hips and pulled them together.
A smile played across the fae’s lips. “You willna hurt me like this,” came his reply, echoing the same thing he’d said that first night after their threadbinding.
“Need… lube,” Jamie managed, although words were becoming difficult as Bran ground their hips together.
“Still loose enough,” came the gasped response, and Jamie’s hips bucked at the idea that Bran’s body was still ready, still open from a few hours ago that he could just…
Bran shifted, one hand taking Jamie’s aching cock and lining it up, his hips at the very edge of the counter.
“God,” Jamie moaned as Bran’s legs pulled him home, his muscles still loose enough and the lube Jamie’d used earlier still able to ease Jamie’s way into his body. His hands held Bran’s hips, keeping him from falling or sliding as the fae threaded his arms around Jamie’s neck, thighs tight at Jamie’s waist as he used his legs to pump Jamie in and out of his body.
More.
That voice, desperate and needy, did things to Jamie that he didn’t understand and utterly lacked the ability to fight. Not that he wanted to. What he wanted was to bury himself in Bran over and over. An ache settled in his chest—not unpleasant, but still there. So he tried to fill it with Bran—his smell, the feel of his skin, the feel of his body…
“Ach… Jamie,” the fae gasped as Jamie snapped his hips forward, driving them both closer to the edge.
“Bran,” Jamie breathed, adjusting his stance so that he could better hit the nerves inside Bran’s body. The fae whimpered, talons digging into Jamie’s shoulders. The pinpricks of pain went straight to Jamie’s groin, and he thrust harder, faster, his hands holding Bran in place as he give himself over to need and desire.
In his arms, Bran cried out, his body tightening around Jamie as heat pumped from him and onto Jamie’s stomach. Jamie all-but-crushed Bran to his body as he came, throbbing out his release into the fae’s tight body.
His legs weak, Jamie buried his face in Bran’s shoulder, leaning his weight forward as he clung to Bran for physical as well as emotional support.
Fingers ran through his hair, smoothing, soothing. “Jamie?”
“Are—are you okay?”
Lips pressed against his forehead. “Aye, of course.”
Jamie pushed himself up, sucking in a breath as he slid from Bran’s body. He brushed feathered hair from Bran’s sweaty face with one hand. “I don’t ever want to hurt you,” he whispered.
Bran smiled at him “You willna,” he replied.
Jamie took Bran’s face between his palms and kissed him. “Promise me you won’t ever let me.”
“I promise.”
Then he jumped half a foot when the oven timer went off. “Shit!”
Bran gave him a questioning look.
“I, ah, reheated our dinner. Since we got… distracted.” Jamie felt a flush creep up his neck.
Bran smiled. “I dinna mind being distracted,” he replied, and the flush on Jamie’s neck spread to his face.
Bran gave him a quick kiss before releasing him. Jamie pulled a few pieces of paper towel off the roll, dampening them with warm water, then offering them to Bran before cleaning himself up. Then he came back to Bran, leaning in for another kiss, this one tender rather than scorching.
“Dinner?” Bran asked him softly when he pulled back.
“Oh, shit.” Jamie stepped across the kitchen and turned off the oven, then pulled his sweats back on before pulling the tray out of the oven.
Then he returned to Bran again, settling his hands on the fae’s waist and resting his forehead against Bran’s. “I—”
Bran kissed him, then pulled back, running his hands over Jamie’s face. “There is nowhere I would rather be, and no one I would rather be with, understand?”
Jamie blinked rapidly, surprised at the emotion pushing against his lids. He nodded.
Bran smiled. “Good. Dinner?”
Jamie gave a half-smile, the curve lifting one side of his lips. “Dinner,” he agreed.
Chapter
Forty-Two
Jamie was at work, and Bran was paging through Jamie’s notebooks—with Jamie’s permission—looking at the drawings and listed ingredients of various recipes from the same book as the one that had contained the drawing of the anail an duine mhairbh—the dead man’s breath. The same recipe had included both ite a selchidh—selkie’s flipper—and seudan a ainnir—maiden’s jewels, but Bran was suspicious about several other things he’d found.
He thought there was a chance that another drawing, for a different recipe in the same book, might be a cuach a mhara—a mermaid’s curl—and another a tiodhlac a gruagach—a gruag’s gift. But the other ingredients he either couldn’t identify or were things he knew to be from Dunehame. But he’d started making notes and sketches of his own on a separate pad Jamie had given him, drawing the plants, labeling the parts and their uses, and then listing off things they were used for in both medicine and magic.
He was working on his sketch of the cuach a mhara when a tap at the window over the desk drew his attention. Outside the window was a large osprey. Alarmed, Bran opened the window. He couldn’t actually give Iolair permission to enter Jamie’s apartment—because it wasn’t his, even if he had permission from Jamie to stay here—but he could talk to his brother on the windowsill.
“What do you need, Iolair?” he asked. The osprey looked at him, then squawked. Even in bird form, Iolair sounded upset. Bran frowned. “There’s a courtyard behind the building. I’ll meet you under the tree.” Iolair let out another cry, then took off from the windowsill.
Jamie had made Bran his own set of keys yesterday, and Bran grabbed them after shifting his form, then pulled on shoes, one of Jamie’s heavy cardigan sweaters, and one of the half-dozen scarves that hung on the tree by the door. He could have easily spun himself a coat, but he preferred Jamie’s mortal clothes to those he spun using magic.
It was cold, and Bran huddled a little deeper into the scarf and sweater as he skirted the back of the building, heading for the courtyard he’d lived over—in the abandoned attic—before Jamie had invited him into his apartment and his life. Bran much preferred the way things were now. It had admittedly only been a handful of days, but the shortness of temper and irritability that had marred their relationship after only the first day following their threadbond hadn’t returned.
Instead, Bran spent his days helping Jamie with research and his nights learning every inch of Jamie’s body. Despite the seriousness of whatever had to have sent Iolair to Dunehame—since Bran knew his brother hated Dunehame—Bran couldn’t help the smile that slid over his face as he thought about Jamie.
A gust of wind kicked up as Bran turned into the courtyard, and he shook his head to clear his hair from his face, not wanting to expose his hands to the winter air. Iolair was waiting for him, having spun himself an ankle length camel wool coat and heavy boots—and, presumably, other clothes that Bran couldn’t see—his speckled brown and white hair blowing in the same gusts toying with Bran’s. Iolair’s expression was serious and drawn.
“What happened?” Bran asked immediately, fear clenching in his gut. He may not be Neach-Cogaidh any longer—unlike his brother—but he still cared about what happened at the Court of Shades. Iolair’s expression made him fear that the Sluagh King had taken a turn for the worse.
“Father was attacked,” Iolair replied, his voice steady, although Bran could still hear the worry in it. It sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the weather. “By the geàrd soilleir.”
“What happened?” Bran kept the fear, the worry under control. He had to.
“Father was hit with an arrow while harvesting feamainn ghropach and uilbheist bones.” Iolair’s face darkened. “The arrow was tipped with poison. Maigdeann believes it to be the same poison used on Cuileann mac Eug.”
Ice burned through Bran’s veins. It had been over two thousand years since the Holly King, Cuileann mac Eug, had been poisoned by the geàrd soilleir at the behest of the Sidhe King, Darach mac Craobh-na-Beatha. He had spent two thousand dying, the last nearly thousand or so slowed by the healing work of his enemy’s son, his own nephew, Cairn mac Darach.
And now Cairn himself had been attacked.
Bran forced himself to swallow back emotion. To emulate Iolair’s stoicism. “What do you need me to do?” he asked his brother when he trusted that his voice would be steady.
“Return to Elfhame. We need your skills.”
Bran nodded once. “I—I need to tell Jamie.”
Iolair’s frown deepened. “I do not understand why you feel any sort of obligation to the half-breed,” he replied, his voice as cold and sharp as the wind that buffeted them.
“You don’t have to understand,” Bran snapped back. “I will tell Jamie and then come through the Carraig Gate.”
Iolair’s lips thinned. “So be it,” he replied. “Do not tarry.”
In a rush of magic, Iolair launched himself skyward, the magically-spun clothing disappearing in the same moment that his body shifted into bird form.
Bran spared only half a second of envy over Iolair’s control of his shifting, then reminded himself that his elder brother had five centuries’ more practice than he had.
Bran returned to Jamie’s apartment, then spun himself a coat that he pulled on over the sweater and scarf, then took a pair of Jamie’s mittens before heading back outside, his steps carrying him down Nicholson, heading for the Surgeons’ Hall Museums.
It was a slow day at the museums—the cold and wind were keeping most tourists indoors or at coffee shops and pubs rather than going to places filled with the cold dead. The white walls and floor, and the shining glass of the pathology museum felt even colder than usual under an overcast sky that lent very little additional lumination through the museum’s skylights.
Jamie shifted, uneasy. He didn’t know why—usually, the weather didn’t have a significant impact on his mood unless it stopped him from running with sleet or ice or a thunderstorm. But even though today wasn’t particularly bad weather, he felt anxious and on edge. He tried to work it off by pacing through the rooms, doing a figure eight through pathology, then back up and around the medical history museum, and back again.
It didn’t help.
He got distracted for a little while by answering questions for some medical students who were on a winter break trip from Boston and very excited to ask him about some of the older pathology samples. It was a pleasant distraction from his own uneasy thoughts. The medical students had invited him to join them at a pub a few blocks down, and Jamie had smiled and told them maybe, wondering if Bran might be interested in going with him.
The sound of rapid footsteps made him look up, seeing Trixie hurrying into the upstairs gallery from the desk across the way—Bran following her.
Jamie’s anxiety immediately elevated. He crossed the ground floor, meeting them at the bottom of the stairs. “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately, his hands gripping Bran’s narrow shoulders. Bran’s expression was haunted.
“My father,” he managed.
“Is he okay?”
Bran shook his head.
“Go, Jamie,” Trixie told him. “There’s barely anyone here, anyway.”
Jamie opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure whether or not he should argue with her. He felt bad about leaving Trixie to close by herself, but Bran clearly needed him. Or wanted him, anyway. And Jamie wanted to be there for him.
“Go, Jamie,” Trixie repeated, patting his arm. Then she looked at Bran. “I hope your da is okay.”
Bran just nodded, but his green eyes were shiny, and that sent a slice of fear through Jamie’s gut. He hadn’t seen Bran this upset before—including when he’d had a knife wound in his own side and a broken arm.
Jamie looked into those vibrant green eyes, shining with what he thought—although he wasn’t sure—might be unshed tears. “Do you need to go… home?”
Bran nodded, and one hand—wearing one of Jamie’s mittens—closed on his arm, although Bran didn’t say anything.
“Do you—want me to come with you?”
A hesitation.
“Jamie, go,” Trixie all but ordered.
“Okay,” Jamie replied. He put his hand over Bran’s. “I’m gonna get my stuff, okay? Five minutes or less.”
Bran nodded again, something that might have been relief on his face alongside the emotion. Jamie went upstairs, Trixie on his heels.
“Don’t you disappear on me again, all right?” she said, watching as Jamie swapped his work shirt for a plain white t-shirt and a cream-colored sweater and grabbed his stuff.
“I’ll try not to,” Jamie replied. “But they’re… off grid.”
Trixie pressed her lips together. “I get it, but—”
“I’ll try not to be gone too long.” He didn’t have to work tomorrow, so at least there was that. “I’ll try to get back before Sunday.”
Green eyes searched his, a small furrow between them over the bridge of Bran’s nose. “I dinna do anything,” the fae answered. “You can feel what I feel through the threadbond.”
“But—”
Bran’s lips quirked. “It would be more accurate to say I stopped doing something,” he said softly.
“Stopped doing what?” Jamie asked.
“Fighting it.”
“Fighting it?” This conversation wasn’t helping Jamie’s confusion.
Bran sighed, although he didn’t move his hand from Jamie’s and didn’t step away. “Aye. I’ve not wanted this bond for so long, I dinna know how to accept it.”
“You fought the threadbond?” Jamie felt hurt, although he tried to keep that from his voice or expression.
Bran winced a little anyway. “I am sorry,” the fae murmured. “I dinna know you. And I was afraid.”
“Of what?” Jamie asked.
“Losing who I thought I was. What I thought I wanted.” Bran looked up and offered him a small smile. “I was wrong.”
“You didn’t want that?” Jamie asked.
“I canna be what I am not,” Bran replied, his voice quiet, but not sad. “And I canna be what Fate will not allow.”
“But I made you sick,” Jamie said softly.
“No.” This time, Bran’s voice was firm. “You dinna make me sick. I made myself sick, refusing to accept what Fate had destined for me.”
“Refusing to be bound to me, you mean.” That hurt, too.
There was pain now in Bran’s green eyes. “I am sorry,” he breathed, his hand tightening around Jamie’s where he held it against his chest. “I shouldna have done so.”
“Because it made you sick.”
“Because I hurt us both.”
“You didn’t hurt me.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly. Bran had never physically hurt him. Jamie hadn’t been sick the way the fae had.
But Bran’s expression grew sad. “Please dinna lie to me,” he said, and there was disappointment and something more in his voice.
“I’m not,” Jamie replied. “I’m fine.”
Bran sighed. “I can feel it, Jamie,” he murmured. “Along the bond.”
“Then why—” Jamie cut himself off, biting his own lip. Why did you push me away?
I was afraid, came the answer, carried on impossible and invisible threads of gold from Bran’s heart to his own.
Jamie swallowed, staring down into green eyes that held both fear and wonder, the same as his own.
I’m not afraid now.
I am.
“Dinna be afraid,” Bran breathed.
Jamie swallowed. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” he whispered. “And I don’t know how to not be scared.”
Trust me.
Bran let go of his hand and reached out, running his fingers over Jamie’s cheek. “I was keeping the bond from being what it could be,” he said. “Blocking its magic. I stopped.”
“Why?”
A small smile flitted over his lips. “Because I realized how much I need you.”
“For your magic?”
“No.” Just you. Bran pulled Jamie’s lips back to his own, and the moment they met, Jamie leaned into the kiss, his hands on Bran’s hips pulling him close. Jamie didn’t mean to give in, to let desire rush through his blood, to claim Bran’s mouth. Mine.
Bran didn’t resist him, instead melting into Jamie’s arms. Yours. Jamie didn’t shy from the bond this time, instead lifting Bran off his feet, turning so that he could set the smaller fae on the edge of the counter, his lips almost bruising with their force.
Heat burned between them, desire crashing through Jamie’s blood with a force that made his knees weak and his sweatpants uncomfortably tight. He tore himself away from Bran’s mouth. “God, how do you do this to me?”
Bran’s hands slid up under his shirt, and Jamie groaned at the sensation of Bran’s hands on his skin. “I canna help myself,” the fae murmured as he pulled Jamie between his legs.
Jamie pulled back far enough to look into those bottomless green eyes. “Is this magic?”
“No more than the sun or moon or sea,” came the answer.
To Jamie, Bran seemed just as inevitable and impossible to resist.
Bran pulled at his shirt, and Jamie peeled it off, groaning when his fingers met nothing but skin when he reached out for Bran again. “God, your skin,” he breathed, burying his face in the crook where Bran’s neck met his shoulder.
Need you. Hands pushed at the waistband of Jamie’s sweats, and he shimmied a little to help Bran push them down, freeing his already-hard-and-aching cock.
“How do you do this to me?” he asked again, not really expecting an answer.
“How do you?” came the breathless reply.
Jamie knew he should be more gentle. Knew that he’d already been rough enough with Bran, but his body didn’t seem to care. He wanted desperately to bury himself in Bran’s body, to lose himself in Bran’s heat.
More.
Jamie groaned. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he gasped out as Bran’s strong legs hooked behind his hips and pulled them together.
A smile played across the fae’s lips. “You willna hurt me like this,” came his reply, echoing the same thing he’d said that first night after their threadbinding.
“Need… lube,” Jamie managed, although words were becoming difficult as Bran ground their hips together.
“Still loose enough,” came the gasped response, and Jamie’s hips bucked at the idea that Bran’s body was still ready, still open from a few hours ago that he could just…
Bran shifted, one hand taking Jamie’s aching cock and lining it up, his hips at the very edge of the counter.
“God,” Jamie moaned as Bran’s legs pulled him home, his muscles still loose enough and the lube Jamie’d used earlier still able to ease Jamie’s way into his body. His hands held Bran’s hips, keeping him from falling or sliding as the fae threaded his arms around Jamie’s neck, thighs tight at Jamie’s waist as he used his legs to pump Jamie in and out of his body.
More.
That voice, desperate and needy, did things to Jamie that he didn’t understand and utterly lacked the ability to fight. Not that he wanted to. What he wanted was to bury himself in Bran over and over. An ache settled in his chest—not unpleasant, but still there. So he tried to fill it with Bran—his smell, the feel of his skin, the feel of his body…
“Ach… Jamie,” the fae gasped as Jamie snapped his hips forward, driving them both closer to the edge.
“Bran,” Jamie breathed, adjusting his stance so that he could better hit the nerves inside Bran’s body. The fae whimpered, talons digging into Jamie’s shoulders. The pinpricks of pain went straight to Jamie’s groin, and he thrust harder, faster, his hands holding Bran in place as he give himself over to need and desire.
In his arms, Bran cried out, his body tightening around Jamie as heat pumped from him and onto Jamie’s stomach. Jamie all-but-crushed Bran to his body as he came, throbbing out his release into the fae’s tight body.
His legs weak, Jamie buried his face in Bran’s shoulder, leaning his weight forward as he clung to Bran for physical as well as emotional support.
Fingers ran through his hair, smoothing, soothing. “Jamie?”
“Are—are you okay?”
Lips pressed against his forehead. “Aye, of course.”
Jamie pushed himself up, sucking in a breath as he slid from Bran’s body. He brushed feathered hair from Bran’s sweaty face with one hand. “I don’t ever want to hurt you,” he whispered.
Bran smiled at him “You willna,” he replied.
Jamie took Bran’s face between his palms and kissed him. “Promise me you won’t ever let me.”
“I promise.”
Then he jumped half a foot when the oven timer went off. “Shit!”
Bran gave him a questioning look.
“I, ah, reheated our dinner. Since we got… distracted.” Jamie felt a flush creep up his neck.
Bran smiled. “I dinna mind being distracted,” he replied, and the flush on Jamie’s neck spread to his face.
Bran gave him a quick kiss before releasing him. Jamie pulled a few pieces of paper towel off the roll, dampening them with warm water, then offering them to Bran before cleaning himself up. Then he came back to Bran, leaning in for another kiss, this one tender rather than scorching.
“Dinner?” Bran asked him softly when he pulled back.
“Oh, shit.” Jamie stepped across the kitchen and turned off the oven, then pulled his sweats back on before pulling the tray out of the oven.
Then he returned to Bran again, settling his hands on the fae’s waist and resting his forehead against Bran’s. “I—”
Bran kissed him, then pulled back, running his hands over Jamie’s face. “There is nowhere I would rather be, and no one I would rather be with, understand?”
Jamie blinked rapidly, surprised at the emotion pushing against his lids. He nodded.
Bran smiled. “Good. Dinner?”
Jamie gave a half-smile, the curve lifting one side of his lips. “Dinner,” he agreed.
Chapter
Forty-Two
Jamie was at work, and Bran was paging through Jamie’s notebooks—with Jamie’s permission—looking at the drawings and listed ingredients of various recipes from the same book as the one that had contained the drawing of the anail an duine mhairbh—the dead man’s breath. The same recipe had included both ite a selchidh—selkie’s flipper—and seudan a ainnir—maiden’s jewels, but Bran was suspicious about several other things he’d found.
He thought there was a chance that another drawing, for a different recipe in the same book, might be a cuach a mhara—a mermaid’s curl—and another a tiodhlac a gruagach—a gruag’s gift. But the other ingredients he either couldn’t identify or were things he knew to be from Dunehame. But he’d started making notes and sketches of his own on a separate pad Jamie had given him, drawing the plants, labeling the parts and their uses, and then listing off things they were used for in both medicine and magic.
He was working on his sketch of the cuach a mhara when a tap at the window over the desk drew his attention. Outside the window was a large osprey. Alarmed, Bran opened the window. He couldn’t actually give Iolair permission to enter Jamie’s apartment—because it wasn’t his, even if he had permission from Jamie to stay here—but he could talk to his brother on the windowsill.
“What do you need, Iolair?” he asked. The osprey looked at him, then squawked. Even in bird form, Iolair sounded upset. Bran frowned. “There’s a courtyard behind the building. I’ll meet you under the tree.” Iolair let out another cry, then took off from the windowsill.
Jamie had made Bran his own set of keys yesterday, and Bran grabbed them after shifting his form, then pulled on shoes, one of Jamie’s heavy cardigan sweaters, and one of the half-dozen scarves that hung on the tree by the door. He could have easily spun himself a coat, but he preferred Jamie’s mortal clothes to those he spun using magic.
It was cold, and Bran huddled a little deeper into the scarf and sweater as he skirted the back of the building, heading for the courtyard he’d lived over—in the abandoned attic—before Jamie had invited him into his apartment and his life. Bran much preferred the way things were now. It had admittedly only been a handful of days, but the shortness of temper and irritability that had marred their relationship after only the first day following their threadbond hadn’t returned.
Instead, Bran spent his days helping Jamie with research and his nights learning every inch of Jamie’s body. Despite the seriousness of whatever had to have sent Iolair to Dunehame—since Bran knew his brother hated Dunehame—Bran couldn’t help the smile that slid over his face as he thought about Jamie.
A gust of wind kicked up as Bran turned into the courtyard, and he shook his head to clear his hair from his face, not wanting to expose his hands to the winter air. Iolair was waiting for him, having spun himself an ankle length camel wool coat and heavy boots—and, presumably, other clothes that Bran couldn’t see—his speckled brown and white hair blowing in the same gusts toying with Bran’s. Iolair’s expression was serious and drawn.
“What happened?” Bran asked immediately, fear clenching in his gut. He may not be Neach-Cogaidh any longer—unlike his brother—but he still cared about what happened at the Court of Shades. Iolair’s expression made him fear that the Sluagh King had taken a turn for the worse.
“Father was attacked,” Iolair replied, his voice steady, although Bran could still hear the worry in it. It sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the weather. “By the geàrd soilleir.”
“What happened?” Bran kept the fear, the worry under control. He had to.
“Father was hit with an arrow while harvesting feamainn ghropach and uilbheist bones.” Iolair’s face darkened. “The arrow was tipped with poison. Maigdeann believes it to be the same poison used on Cuileann mac Eug.”
Ice burned through Bran’s veins. It had been over two thousand years since the Holly King, Cuileann mac Eug, had been poisoned by the geàrd soilleir at the behest of the Sidhe King, Darach mac Craobh-na-Beatha. He had spent two thousand dying, the last nearly thousand or so slowed by the healing work of his enemy’s son, his own nephew, Cairn mac Darach.
And now Cairn himself had been attacked.
Bran forced himself to swallow back emotion. To emulate Iolair’s stoicism. “What do you need me to do?” he asked his brother when he trusted that his voice would be steady.
“Return to Elfhame. We need your skills.”
Bran nodded once. “I—I need to tell Jamie.”
Iolair’s frown deepened. “I do not understand why you feel any sort of obligation to the half-breed,” he replied, his voice as cold and sharp as the wind that buffeted them.
“You don’t have to understand,” Bran snapped back. “I will tell Jamie and then come through the Carraig Gate.”
Iolair’s lips thinned. “So be it,” he replied. “Do not tarry.”
In a rush of magic, Iolair launched himself skyward, the magically-spun clothing disappearing in the same moment that his body shifted into bird form.
Bran spared only half a second of envy over Iolair’s control of his shifting, then reminded himself that his elder brother had five centuries’ more practice than he had.
Bran returned to Jamie’s apartment, then spun himself a coat that he pulled on over the sweater and scarf, then took a pair of Jamie’s mittens before heading back outside, his steps carrying him down Nicholson, heading for the Surgeons’ Hall Museums.
It was a slow day at the museums—the cold and wind were keeping most tourists indoors or at coffee shops and pubs rather than going to places filled with the cold dead. The white walls and floor, and the shining glass of the pathology museum felt even colder than usual under an overcast sky that lent very little additional lumination through the museum’s skylights.
Jamie shifted, uneasy. He didn’t know why—usually, the weather didn’t have a significant impact on his mood unless it stopped him from running with sleet or ice or a thunderstorm. But even though today wasn’t particularly bad weather, he felt anxious and on edge. He tried to work it off by pacing through the rooms, doing a figure eight through pathology, then back up and around the medical history museum, and back again.
It didn’t help.
He got distracted for a little while by answering questions for some medical students who were on a winter break trip from Boston and very excited to ask him about some of the older pathology samples. It was a pleasant distraction from his own uneasy thoughts. The medical students had invited him to join them at a pub a few blocks down, and Jamie had smiled and told them maybe, wondering if Bran might be interested in going with him.
The sound of rapid footsteps made him look up, seeing Trixie hurrying into the upstairs gallery from the desk across the way—Bran following her.
Jamie’s anxiety immediately elevated. He crossed the ground floor, meeting them at the bottom of the stairs. “What’s wrong?” he asked immediately, his hands gripping Bran’s narrow shoulders. Bran’s expression was haunted.
“My father,” he managed.
“Is he okay?”
Bran shook his head.
“Go, Jamie,” Trixie told him. “There’s barely anyone here, anyway.”
Jamie opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure whether or not he should argue with her. He felt bad about leaving Trixie to close by herself, but Bran clearly needed him. Or wanted him, anyway. And Jamie wanted to be there for him.
“Go, Jamie,” Trixie repeated, patting his arm. Then she looked at Bran. “I hope your da is okay.”
Bran just nodded, but his green eyes were shiny, and that sent a slice of fear through Jamie’s gut. He hadn’t seen Bran this upset before—including when he’d had a knife wound in his own side and a broken arm.
Jamie looked into those vibrant green eyes, shining with what he thought—although he wasn’t sure—might be unshed tears. “Do you need to go… home?”
Bran nodded, and one hand—wearing one of Jamie’s mittens—closed on his arm, although Bran didn’t say anything.
“Do you—want me to come with you?”
A hesitation.
“Jamie, go,” Trixie all but ordered.
“Okay,” Jamie replied. He put his hand over Bran’s. “I’m gonna get my stuff, okay? Five minutes or less.”
Bran nodded again, something that might have been relief on his face alongside the emotion. Jamie went upstairs, Trixie on his heels.
“Don’t you disappear on me again, all right?” she said, watching as Jamie swapped his work shirt for a plain white t-shirt and a cream-colored sweater and grabbed his stuff.
“I’ll try not to,” Jamie replied. “But they’re… off grid.”
Trixie pressed her lips together. “I get it, but—”
“I’ll try not to be gone too long.” He didn’t have to work tomorrow, so at least there was that. “I’ll try to get back before Sunday.”
