“It is for your own safety. As you said, a cuff could be removed. How would that serve you? Better that it cannot be taken off.”

Barrons and V’lane had both been up to the same trick all along: trying to put their permanent mark on me. Barrons had succeeded. I’d be darned if V’lane would. Besides, I was pretty sure Mallucé would have cheerfully sawed off my arm to remove the cuff, which made me really glad I hadn’t been wearing it. “You want me to trust you, V’lane? Give me another way to summon you. A way that costs me nothing.”

He sneered. “And make a Fae prince answerable to a sidheseer?”

“Allow me to put it into perspective for you. I saw the Book again the other night, and had no way to contact you.”

“You saw it? When? Where?”

“How do I summon you?”

“You dare much, sidhe-seer.”

“You ask much, Fae.”

“Not as much as I could.”

Had I lost a few seconds there, or had he been leaning closer all the time? His mouth was inches from mine. I could feel his breath on my skin. He smelled of exotic, drugging spices.

“Back off, V’lane,” I warned.

“I am preparing to give you the way to summon me, human. Stand still for it.”

“A kiss? Oh, please! I’m not that—”

“My name on your tongue. I cannot teach you to say it. Humans do not possess the ability to form such sounds. But I can give it to you. With my mouth, I can place it on your tongue. Then you have but to release my name to the wind, and I will appear.”

He was so close that the heat of his body was sunshine on my skin. Was nothing simple? I didn’t want a cuff. I didn’t want a kiss. I wanted nice normal methods of communication. “How about a cell phone?”

“No towers in Faery.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Did you just make a joke?”

“You walk among the worst of my kind, yet tremble at the prospect of a simple kiss.”

“I’m not trembling. See any trembling here?” I thrust my trembling hands in my coat pockets, and gave him a dead-level, cocky stare. I doubted anything from V’lane was simple. Especially not a kiss. “How about a mystical cell phone, that doesn’t use towers?” I pressed. “Surely, with all that power you’re so smug about, you can create—”