by Sam Hall
So eloquently he’d ripped my heart out and then shoved it back in my chest along with a set of rules and regulations. You’re a fae now, Kira.
“Kira?” Jen had called out.
“Tell me you don’t,” I hissed at him. “Tell me it was all bullshit, that you made it up to get into my pants.”
I watched the muscle in his jaw flex, imagining his teeth grinding, his brows jerking down.
“Haven’t you got enough men, hovering around you, fighting to be by your side?”
“Just tell me you don’t,” I said. “That’s all you’ve gotta do.”
“I don’t,” he ground out, then speared me through with those harsh grey eyes.
I couldn’t seem to stop it, walking into this kind of pain like it was some sort of caress. I felt the tears prick my eyes but I shook my head. He wouldn’t be this tense, looking like it was me that had stabbed the knife between his ribs, not the other way around.
“Liar,” I’d croaked out, then got into the car.
“So,” I said, forcing my tone to be bright and friendly, “how’s things on the Rutherglen party bus?”
“A bit lonely to be honest,” Jen said, but she smiled to soften her words. “It’s OK, really. I remember my transition. I wouldn’t be hanging out on Vervain’s bus if I’d just turned. Well…” Her eyes slid sideways, a sly smile on her face. “Not unless she brought a whole lotta friends with her.”
“I keep telling you, I gotta box of dildos with your name on it,” the woman herself replied, picking up her cup of tea and shooting Jen a sidelong look before taking a sip. “I can fill every damn thing you want and still keep on coming. My refractory time is on point.”
I watched Jen consider that for a second, taking a flustered little breath before giving the other woman a little shove.
“I just thought… I’d had all these plans. I didn’t know if you were going to transition, but I felt like…like if you did, we could have…”
“We still can have, Jen,” I said, reaching across the table and taking her hand. “You’re my best mate. You’ve been through everything with me. I’m sorry I bailed—”
“You didn’t bail. You’ve been caught up, and Liam is being a possessive jerk.”
“So we’re talking about that now?” Vervain said. “Because goddamn, girl. I’ve never seen Liam Hartley look at anyone like he does you. Not even fucking Rhiannon.”
“Fucking Rhiannon.” Jen’s eyes rolled upwards. “I love Daddy, but seriously. What was he thinking, foisting her on us?”
This was the moment I should have struck a blow for the sisterhood and stopped any bitching about Rhiannon in its tracks, because what was she but a pawn in whatever game the Rutherglen was playing? But I didn’t.
“So what’s the deal?” I said.
“Well, she’s going to be a nightmare,” Jen replied with more heat than I was used to hearing from her. “She’s been on the phone to Daddy constantly. No sooner does she have one demand met, then she wants something else. If she’s angling to become lady of the manor, Daddy and I are going to have words.”
“But you’re the heir, right?”
“I’m the heir in waiting, until Dad decides he wants to step down or pass the reins over to me, which won’t be anytime soon. If she becomes Lady Rutherglen…” I squeezed her fingers tighter when I saw her eyes shine. “But enough about me.”
“Not enough about you,” I said. “We haven’t really talked for days. I can’t remember spending this long apart. Even when we do things together like watch the concert, I’m either stuck with a camera in my hand or off doing…whatever the fuck I’m doing with those guys. I’m a shitty friend, to ditch you the moment things start happening in my life.”
Those shining eyes got positively dewy at that. Her smile was a little watery but nonetheless warm.
“Ki, don’t you get it? I wanted this for you, for both of us. We were trapped inside Gisbourne, like rats in a cage. Of course we hung out all the time, because what else were we going to do? I love you and I always want to hang out, but I’m not going to be sulking in the corner because you have something going on. People are starting to see what I always knew—your strength, your beauty. Now, throw us poor neglected ladies a bone and fill us in on what the hell went on last night. Daddy’s freaking out about the maintenance bill the venue tried to foist on us. He managed to argue it was a natural disaster as the power went off in all the surrounding suburbs.”
So I told them. The food arrived and filled the table, and I forced the words out. It was hard to describe my introduction to court, the girl and her horned lovers.
“You needn’t worry about the girl,” Vervain said, dipping a fry in some ketchup. “Goaties,” she noted my quizzical look, “that’s the girls who take on the claracans as lovers. They don’t go with anyone else. Once you go monster cock complete with knot…” She illustrated what she meant by closing her fist and punching upwards, my eyes as wide as saucers. “No one else is as good for them. The claracan love it because it’s a steady supply of very willing pussy, and the girls love it as it’s the closest you can get to being fisted and fucked at the same time.” She munched on a few chips as we just stared. “What? Sweethearts, if you haven’t tried it, do not knock it. Ain’t no one missing your g-spot if they’re giving you the Muppet.” I cocked my head to one side. There was so much information in what she was saying, I was having difficulties parsing it. She laughed and then turned her hand into an imitation of a sock puppet, then showed it burrowing into the ring of the fingers of her other hand.
“Well, now I know a way to counter the boredom on the bus,” Jen said, attempting a joke, but I think we were all only half convinced.
“Yesss…” Vervain hissed, whipping out her phone. “I’ll express order some of the really good lube and have it shipped to our next stop.”
“OK, gauche question coming up, but are you gay, Jen?”
She smiled lazily at that, something I’d never really seen her do.
“Still got those human ideas in your head, Ki? Some fae, they come out totally straight or only same sex attracted, but most, they hover around in the middle. Like the Kinsey scale, though that’s pretty outdated now. If you look at the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, that’s probably a better way of looking at it. It takes into account who people are sexually attracted to, who they fantasise about, who they fall in love with, who they feel the most comfortable with. Fae, we live outside all of the hetero-normative bullshit, outside of strict gender roles. When you’ve got people who are more or less humanoid looking, you don’t need those kind of strictures. People are with who they feel like being with, gender doesn’t really matter.”
She smiled as she watched me struggle to get my head around it.
“But yeah, most of my lovers are female. I’m the heir, I can’t afford to get pregnant yet, not until Daddy has settled on the alliance he wants for me. Babies are always welcome, we have so few of them, but I can’t chance it right now. So…” She leaned over and placed a gentle kiss on Vervain’s lips. “I enjoy myself with those I like, who like me. I can’t form anything permanent.” I watched the other woman’s smile falter for a moment. “But I look after whoever I’m with.”
“Yeah, you do. This lube’s gonna cost ya,” the other woman quipped.
“What price for broadening your horizons?” Jen said with a shrug and a grin.
“So, are you sure you want to hear about this?” I asked once we’d decimated a ridiculous amount of the food.
“Neither of us are allergic to dick,” Jen said. “So spill.”
“Yeah, I’ve worn a whole lot. Pink ones, curved ones, ones ribbed for your pleasure or with vibrating cores…” Her words trailed away when she saw she had our rapt attention. “Just saying, whatever Hartley’s packing ain’t gonna scare me away. Just don’t ask me to touch it.” She snatched up a sausage and bit a chunk off with a wink.
“Right, so I kinda jumped Johnno last night. Liam said I could le
ave court, and when we were out in the carpark, I dunno. He wasn’t him, he was just a guy and I…” The two of them laughed. “What?”
“You watched a girl getting it good from a couple of dudes with massive dicks, and saw your sub-in-waiting do naughty things to a girl who probably looked just like you,” Jen said.
“I’ll give it to Hartley. They know how to pull your strings,” Vervain said.
“You were turned on, Ki. It might have been weird or alien or whatever, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a turn on. Jake offering to do anything, absolutely anything to please you. Billy guiding you through all of it. This was a scene. An elaborate, complex one, where everyone was totally into what was happening, but still.”
“I don’t get it,” I said.
“They want you, that much is palpably true. Even we could see it the few minutes we were on the bus. How Marlow’s going to find his place in this…” Jen said with a shake of his head. “But this, this was all designed to turn you on, make your introduction into court as hot and as enticing as possible. It’s what we do.”
“So you’re saying they set me up?”
“Not really. Imagine some human guy asked you out. You like him, he likes you, so he borrows a nice car for the night, buys pretty flowers, dresses nice, puts on cologne, takes you to a nice restaurant. Is any of that spontaneous?”
“Well, no.”
“Of course it isn’t. No one’s who they are in the first few months of a relationship. You’re partly buzzing on the pheromones of being with someone or someones you’re into, and the other half is trying to make the best possible impression, until the bond settles. A human guy’s trying to show you he’s safe, that he cares, and is respectful.”
“Fae want you hot and wanting,” Vervain said, tracing circles on the table top. “We fall, sometimes harder than humans, but we live a damn long time. If there’s no fire, no spark, that’s a bloody long time to be tied to someone who’s little more than a friend.”
“So, anyway, you jumped Johnno.”
“Um…yeah. I dragged him back to the bus and it was…” I glanced out the window, looking for something reassuringly normal to hang onto, but it was different here too. “It was like… With Marlow, it was intense and sweet and hot, and it felt so good but—”
“But you were in control,” Jen said with a soft smile.
“Sort of. Like he was directing what we were doing, but at any point, I could take that control from him. I didn’t want to. I don’t want to, but—”
“We trip on power,” she replied. “Marlow is Marlow. You’re lucky to have him, I say that with my whole heart, but he isn’t ever going to run his own court. That’s not who he is. You’ll get so much from being with him…” Her words trailed off as our eyes met, she nodded slightly. We both knew what she was saying. “But he isn’t a threat to you. The Hartleys, they have power. They’re dangerous—to each other, to you. You’re still finding your power, but they know what theirs is. They grew up on the other side of the court system to me, surviving anyway they could. If you decide to do this with them, they will always, always be working an angle. It’s part of who they are. So what was it like?”
Jen and I had dissected our sexual encounters before—me more than her, for obvious reasons I saw now—but this was odd for me. I felt like I was taking something small and fragile, and staking it out on the table before them, using precise, cutting words to describe something indescribable. They seemed to sense this, falling silent as I got through it, all of it, including this morning.
“Fucking Hartley in love.” The silence had stretched out for some time before Vervain shook her head. “If I had a dollar for every crying girl’s cunt I licked better after those guys had kicked them to the curb, I would be sitting on my own throne of gold.”
“Love?” I choked on that, reaching for a drink to wash the lump in my throat.
“What else is it? They’ve been dream stalking you for what? Years? Rolling around in your sex dreams of their fearless leader, getting oh so close, only to get caught in their own honey trap. Knocking back bids from rival courts for a night between your thighs.” I hadn’t specified exactly what had been offered, not wanting that tidbit to get back to Jen’s dad. “They’re all touchy-feelie this morning, and they looked like they would’ve fought the world to keep ahold of you. You’ve formed a bond with one brother, Liam is a hair’s breadth from chomping on you and claiming you as his next. You’ve got Billy guiding you to become a baby Dom for Jake in the group. You watch tonight. You’ll be put through your paces at court, led into situations that just happen to trip your trigger, and they’ll be there with arms out all around you to catch you when you’ve drenched your knickers.”
Vervain’s words hit me harder than she intended, I was sure. I felt like my brain was on some kind of rack, continually being stretched wider and wider. I just sat there, staring at the bright white plates covered with the remains of our meal, and startled when the waitress came to take the food away.
“Send me the bills for the men behind us and those next to the door as well, please,” Jen said to the waitress.
“Look, this is obviously a lot to take in, but this is good, Kira. You’ve stumbled onto something powerful with Johnno,” Jen said. “That’s what I always wanted for you, to take your place within the highest of our kind. People are going to see you’re a force to reckon with, but I think what they’ve overlooked is that you need to find yourself in all of this. Come to court with us tonight.”
“Bring your sub. He’s as likely to get into trouble, trying to get your attention,” Vervain said. “You may as well control that.”
Jen nodded. “Come with Jake and explore away from the Hartley games. Everything’s on offer in faerie. Find what you want without them guiding your hand.”
I agreed, because what else could I do? There wasn’t any going back. I hadn’t understood the court system before, but I did now that I’d seen those suited guys last night. You used the collective to protect yourself, while you protected them. If this was going to be my world, working out which parts of it I was going to choose to engage with was important.
“I’ll introduce you to some people as well,” Vervain said. “If you decide to take Jake on like this, you’ll need some training. Safe, sane, consensual. It doesn’t have as much traction as it should in fae. He’s dangerous the way he is, just left to roam.”
“Are you OK?” Jen said, rubbing my arm.
“There’s one more thing,” I said, and then I told her about the lightning man.
13
Everything was quiet when I returned to the bus, but not because it was empty. Marlow had gone, but The Changelings were all there, sitting in the booths just inside the door. I’d expected that it would be empty, thought everyone would have a whole lot to do while I was off gorging myself on American delicacies. Instead, I walked up the steps to feel their combined gaze on me.
“Hey,” said Animal, the driver, breaking the dense silence. “I’m off to get some shut eye.”
“Sleep well,” I said by way of a reflex.
They waited until the guy had walked down the steps and shut the door behind him, creating an airless little cocoon inside the bus. I jumped when I heard the sharp sound of a can being opened. Liam watched me over the rim of his beer as he took a long drink, those eyes taking everything in. My fingers were fidgeting with the zip of my jacket, my eyes darting around, trying to gauge the mood in the room. It was shit, that was about all I got.
I sighed and went to head back to the bedroom to grab some of my gear when Liam said, “You go down there, we’re coming with you. We’re locking the door and staying in there until it’s sorted out. I’ll cancel the show if I have to.”
I froze.
Johnno let out a long, ragged breath. “C’mere, Kira,” he said, then added, “Please,” when I didn’t respond automatically. His beautiful face was drawn and haggard, something that only seemed to be relieved when I came and sat next
to him. He took my hand in his, and that same familiar-slash-unfamiliar feeling rushed through me. I felt like resting my chin on his shoulder and talking that usual sweet nonsense I’d seen people in love do—not really saying anything, just talking to hear the sound of each other’s voices. But he was a stranger.
A stranger whose dick I’d had inside me. Something twisted down low when I remembered what that’d been like, what it could be like if I did exactly what Liam said. He wanted to talk, but I was pretty sure I could curtail that by shucking off these clothes. The fact that I could taunt men like these, cause them to lose track of what they wanted just by showing them my naked body was probably the most bizarre realisation I’d had today.
Johnno’s head jerked towards me, his nostrils flaring. Evidently, thinking about orgies had me blooming again. He smiled slowly, cautiously, a flicker of hope lighting within his eyes as the rest of the guys leaned in hungrily.
What they’ve overlooked is that you need to find yourself in all of this.
Jen’s words echoed in my mind. I swallowed, preparing myself for what I was about to say.
“Look…” I started out OK, but my voice died in my throat. Jen might have been right, but I had no framework for this kind of conversation. “Johnno said…during a moment of passion, that we were all joined now?”
“Bound,” Liam said, crossing his arms. “Joined indicates that it could be broken. It can’t.”
“Which you intended all along. All of this.” I glanced down at Johnno’s hand, the twin feelings of comfort and being cornered, uncomfortable companions. “You’re right,” I said, glancing at my preceptor. “You’re not a good man.”
He hadn’t expected that. Surprise and pain flared in his eyes, but he didn’t let me go. None of them would, ever.
Jen had told me to find who I was now that I was fae, and she was right in ways she didn’t understand. Because human Kira would have been aghast at this heavy-handed, arrogant bullshit, would have stormed out of here in a self-righteous huff. Jake leaned forward, his eyes glittering, staring into mine, his mouth opening to say something, to plead his case, but Billy’s hand slapped down on his wrist, and the red-haired man’s eyes slid closed as those fingers bit down, his words forgotten and coming out as a huff of breath instead. I could feel it, that rush of pleasure at being confined, held exactly where you wanted to be and forced to take it, whatever it was. Their eyes sharpened, elbows were placed on the table, and they scented me like dogs.
