I had to put him in a position where he had no choice but to hold the spear. To take it. Touch it. I would settle for no less than skin on steel. If he were a Gripper—or an Unseelie of any kind—he wouldn’t be able to do it. It was that simple.

So how was I going to trick him into taking it?

These pages had been worth Dani’s efforts for this tidbit alone. I was glad the book on V’lane had been gone, and this had been there in its place.

I resumed reading. It was slow going but fascinating,

The author of the pocket notebook was no sidhe-seer. Its scribe was a man, or rather a young boy, who’d been so beautiful he was mocked by the warriors of his time, though loved by the lasses who’d taught him his letters.

At ten and three, he’d had the misfortune of capturing the eye of a Faery princess, while taking a shortcut through a dark and tangled wood.

She’d charmed and seduced him off to Faery, where she’d swiftly transformed into something cold and frightening. She’d kept him locked in a golden cage at court, where he’d been forced to watch the Fae play with their human “pets.” Among their games, their favorite was turning mortals Pri-ya: into creatures who begged for the touch of a Fae, any Fae—in fact, for the touch of anything at all, for the “vilest of things to be done to them, and to do foul things to each other,” according to the young scribe. These creatures had no will, no mind, no awareness of anything but sexual need. They knew neither morality nor mercy, and were as likely to turn on one another as rabid animals. The boy had found them terrifying and feared being given to what had become of his human companions. He had no way of tracking time but he watched hundreds come and go, and began a growth of manly hair, which was when the princess began once more to look his way.

When the Fae were no longer amused with their pets they cast them from Faery to die. In this manner, the letter of the Compact wasn’t violated. They didn’t actually kill the humans they captured. They just didn’t save them. I wondered how many had died in madhouses, or been used for exactly what they wanted, and killed by their own kind.