In a low tone, he murmured, “I can’t share details of how I found that, but the note was not written by me.”
The hint of anger in his voice made my nerves sing. Probably for going through his things. But if he hadn’t written that, who had? It still didn’t make sense, but I didn’t want to push any more buttons by accident.
He softened his voice at whatever crossed my face. “I understand why you went looking for answers, but I hope going forward you might trust me enough to ask directly.”
Did he really mean that? I hesitated, meeting his pale blue eyes. “Okay,” I said quietly. Time to switch to the topic he’d expected me to ask about in the first place. “Tell me about the contracts.”
Standing, he picked the contract up from the table in front of us. He pointed at our signatures where the ink was still fresh. “Upholding a fae contract depends on blood. Blood is magic.”
I forced my eyes down to where his finger touched the page. “Got it.”
“Generally, there’s only one way out of a blood contract,” Soren continued, not seeming to notice how frazzled I felt. He settled back to lean one arm on the top of the sofa. “I’m sure you can guess what that is.”
Though my mind hadn’t been as sharp this last week as it usually was, I still managed to focus and consider the puzzle he presented. Once I thought on it, the answer was obvious: “By dying?”
“Correct,” he agreed.
Cold fear stole over me. “Is that the only way?” My voice came out breathy, panicked.Is that the only way out for Dad, Rissa, and Olive? And Mom, if she’s even here?
“No.”
That one word from him allowed me to breathe again, though my chest still hurt a bit.
“But it is the easiest way,” Soren continued, “so that’s how we first attempted to cancel human contracts when helping them escape the Hollow Court. If you can fool the magic into thinking someone died, they’ll automatically be released. But the death, even if temporary, has to be real.”
His eyes grew distant, somber, like he was remembering something he wished he could forget. “It didn’t go well.”
“Do I want to know?” I mean, I did rightnow, but something about the sadness in those usually intense blue eyes made me think I’d regret asking.
“Probably not,” he answered honestly. “When we tried to cheat the contracts this way, usually through poison that stopped the heart, it proved nearly impossible. Either the humans didn’t fully die, in which case the magic sensed their lifeblood still clinging to the contract and refused to let them out, or...” He winced like it hurt him to say the next part. “In the majority of cases, if we successfully stopped their hearts, they lacked the willpower to return.”
“What do you mean?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment, eyes unfocused as he remembered. “When we lost the first one, I hoped it was a fluke.”
I covered my mouth as his words sank in.
“It turns out the majority of humans under these types of permanent contracts at some point lose their will to live.” His eyes shuttered. “We didn’t try for long. Our success rate was quite low. Only one of four humans fought their way back from death’s door.”
“Oh, that’s...” I was at a loss for words
“Appalling? Shocking? Horrifying?” he supplied.
“All of the above,” I whispered.
He’d helped them... by killing them. But his goal was to bring them back to life. Though he’d failed, he’d meant to rescue and return those people to their homes. And I’d gotten the sense earlier that he and his friends had succeeded. My opinion of him swung back and forth like a pendulum, not stopping on either side, unable to figure out where he landed.
But he wasn’t done.
“I couldn’t stomach those odds, which meant we really only had one other option: to modify the original contract.”
Thank goodness he’d moved to a different option.
“Renegotiating happens more often than you’d think with our kind,” he explained, seeming to sense what I was about to ask. “If we want to request different terms, we simply need to offer something the other party wants more—maybe it’s more money, more jewels, more servitude, or even a substitute to take our place if we can find one. One way or another, we can usually find our way to an agreeable trade or cancellation.”
“And then you sign a new contract?”
“Yes,” Soren confirmed with a nod. “A replacement must be written on the same paper with the same blood and the same signatures. But the fae seducing humans into service aren’t the type to make trades.”
