Fuck, I knew this song.
They started out with a bang. “What the Devil Wants” was their very first song. They’d played the rowdy, rollicking beat almost as a call to arms, trying to use the bravado of the song and the raucous guitar riffs to embolden them, so that by the time a young Liam stepped up to the mic and took that first siren’s breath of his, imbuing his first wail with a divine power, even the jaded perked up and paid a-fucking-ttention. He bit off the words about being a slave to the devil and finding your way to be at peace with that.
Write what you know, Kei had said. So they fucking did.
Liam’s grin was so open and free the first time someone got to their feet, only growing brighter when another, then whole clusters did. Not exactly a club banger, but the fae recognised the tribal beat for what it was and moved those snake-hipped bodies in time with it.
They played song after song, the confidence building, making Jake’s arms move faster, Billy’s fingers dance across the strings, Johnno shaking his head as he wandered across the stage, fighting to keep up. And Luc? His eyes crackled with Sky Daddy’s fire as he kept the songs swinging along, the low down notes he played trying to ground the crazy going on around him.
But he lost the battle. Of course he did. This was the moment they formed their quintet, founded Court Hartley, some of the members of Rutherglen dancing to become the first of their court. They didn’t know what they were doing, just reaching out like musicians always do, wanting to touch the divine and trying not to brake when they failed. They glowed brighter and brighter, the stage lights dim, insubstantial things now. Plenty in the crowd had to look away, but the Rutherglen didn’t. He just watched history get made in front of him with an impassive stare.
I was shocked by their final number. The energy on the stage had tamped down now, seats found as mics were rearranged. Billy, Liam, Johnno, they were dripping as they settled down on them. Then Jake played the first few beats of “Ache.”
I frowned, but with whose face? There was no Rhiannon now, she had come on the scene much later when The Changelings were riding the crest of their success, so where did this song come from? I searched the stage for it, for clues, for some sort of explanation, but there with Jake was the answer.
He would always fail at poker, every emotion and thought made clear on his mobile face. His eyes fell half closed as he played the slow, ponderous beat so softly now, just a faint counterpoint to the acoustic guitars, which strummed through the song, the song building, Billy winding a beautiful flurry of notes around the main thread of the song. And then Liam sang.
He did it with his eyes closed, and I could see why now. What had it cost him, to tell me that story back at the Rutherglen estate? To try and mask all this naked feeling behind a tale of love lost? Maybe he had loved Rhiannon, maybe not, but that’s not what “Ache” was about. Whether it was his geas pushing down upon him, or just the bonds they’d formed, what made them ache was the world, the Rutherglen, the unfortunate accidents of birth that led them here and to each other. For a moment, Liam did what Kei had advised and more besides. He reached out, connected with the audience, and refused to hold a single thing back, giving everything damn thing that was inside all of them to the crowd.
The reservoir forming spontaneously in the air above them got everyone’s attention. There were no more impassive faces when the shining jewel appeared in the air, the same glinting gem I’d seen above The Changeling stages in so many videos. Different colours formed around each man—Liam, white and blinding, Johnno, a deep gold, Billy, deepest purple, Jake, scarlet, and Luc, a stream of pure lightning. Light that shot into the stone.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, I saw that now from the crowd’s faces. What had been surprise and awe turned to fear as the streams of light poured from the men into the stone. It glowed brighter and brighter as they fed it with their music, finally flaring blindingly intense as the last note was played.
Billy’s hand fell limp on the strings, Jake bending over his drum set, and the others looked just as trashed. You could have heard a pin drop in the whole auditorium, the rasps of the musicians’ breaths the only sound.
“Milord Hartley,” one man said, dropping to one knee.
Eyes slid around, taking in the stiff set of the Rutherglen’s shoulders, his impassive glare.
“Sign them,” he said finally, especially when others looked like they were gonna take a knee. “Then get the next band on stage.”
I wasn’t surprised to see the same lights surrounding each man now, glimmering in the murk of the bathroom, shrouding the tiles and the stalls in grey shadow, because nothing else could glow with the same intensity. I arched my back as Johnno called my name. “Kira, Kira, Kira.” He looked agonised as he rode me to completion, his fingers biting in as he fought what was about to come.
Him, he did, his seed jetting into me as the light in his chest rose up, swelling brighter and brighter gold before slamming into mine. Tears dripped freely from my eyes as I became filled in ways I hadn’t felt for so long. They fell closed, a long keen escaping my throat as I felt him, Johnno, all that sweetness, all of that dark, twisted need swirling around inside me until my chest began to ache, just rubbing me raw from the inside out. Aching. The pain that wasn’t a pain rose and rose, until finally, the bond settled with an audible click.
I cried when Johnno pulled free of me, a pain that didn’t ease, rising until he put his arms around me, holding me hard against his chest until I wasn’t sure where he started and I ended.
“Here.”
Billy’s voice was harsh and corroded, but he held a hand out to me, the purple of his light bobbing on top of his palm. My hand went to take it and him on automatic, the part of me that wanted to run, run, run sleeping now, waiting to raise her head and cause shit another day. Johnno tilted my head back and kissed my lips with all the sweetness and sadness of the song I’d just heard a much younger him play. It was a kiss goodbye, if just for now. I stepped free, then was caged again in another man’s arms.
“Hey, how’s my dark queen?”
It was odd, to see those full lips, that frighteningly beautiful face ask after my wellbeing, but when did Billy ever do what I expect? He tilted his head, like he could read my thoughts and they amused him.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Do what exactly? I feel like…” I couldn’t articulate it, any of it.
“Bonding with us. Becoming part of our quintet. Sextet I guess now.”
“Definitely sextet,” Jake said, waggling his eyebrows.
“And what will that mean?”
I was asking the right questions, but my brain couldn’t process the answers anyway. It just focused on his lips, on the slither of purple light as he told me how it would bind me to them. Billy seemed to sense that, falling silent and watching me carefully.
“It’s what was always going to happen, wasn’t it?” I asked finally.
“It’s what was always going to happen.”
Someone had talked to me about this before. I caught it, like a half remembered overheard conversation, a whisper on the wind. Choose what you want and move towards it. Was that it? It didn’t matter. The look of relief on Billy’s face as I moved in closer, breathing him in for just a second and then kissing him, accepting him.