to a nightingale

ONE

"I want you to write a full-length feature on the Bat Boys," Clotho says, and Gwyn tries not to let her jaw drop.

The Bat Boys have been rock stars for over a decade, essentially a thousand years on the music scene. She's worked as a staff writer at the House of Wind for two years now, mostly covering local bands and visiting authors. Her subjects are always women, thanks to Clotho, editor-in-chief and founder of The House of Wind, who knows and keeps Gwyn's secrets. And she's proud of her work, the stories she tells and the piercing questions she asks, the way she's grown more and more courageous, but covering a band that famously stores their Grammys in their respective guest bathrooms because they've won so many is about seventeen steps up the career ladder that Gwyn carefully constructed for herself a few years back, when she was remaking her life from the ashes.

"I'm flattered," she says, finally, flicking her notepad open. "But are you sure I'm the right one for this assignment?"

"They requested you specifically." Clotho's voice is gentle. "You'd spend a month on the road with them, and there will be an interview tomorrow, before the album release. It'll all be exclusive. They haven't even asked to review any of your articles before we publish, so you can write whatever you want. Whatever you see, as long as it's on the record. They've never given anyone this kind of access before. My next call is to IT to make sure our servers don't crash from the web traffic."

"It's just--" She takes a deep breath, forcing herself to stay in the present moment. One of those tricks her therapist taught her.

"No men are safe, but these three are damn close." It means something, when Clotho says it. She was a legend in music journalism, working for a major magazine and writing the majority of their cover stories, the one who could always find the hook. She'd been the one to launch the Bat Boys with a feature, back when an article could work that kind of magic. But the only thing most people remember about Clotho these days is the scandal she'd created when she'd sued her magazine for the harassment and abuse they'd subjected her to for the decade she'd been their brightest light. She'd won the suit, an astronomical amount. According to the rumors, the trauma had left her mute for a year. And then, three years back, she'd founded The House of Wind, a digital magazine for women and nonbinary writers to cover the world on their own terms.

Gwyn had been working at a coffee shop and covering shows on her blog when Clotho had found her. An exclusive feature, in fact what sounds like a series of articles with total access, would transform her career. And Clotho trusts them.

"You really think I can do this?" she asks, one last prevarication.

"You're ready, Gwyneth," Clotho says, using the name that Gwyn has buried for the last three years. The name of the girl who believed the world would offer her everything she wanted. At the House of Wind, Clotho's the only one who knows it.

"Then I'll do it." And maybe she's being foolish, maybe she's learned nothing in the past three years, but Gwyn still finds herself grinning. Because she already suspects that no matter what happens, this assignment is going to change her life.

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When she was sixteen, Gwyn had a poster of the Bat Boys on the wall of her room, another on the inside of her locker. There were other, more popular bands, but she'd loved their music from their debut. She loved the way each of them had a unique sound, from their voices to the style of the songs each one wrote, even the way they approached their instruments. Rhys, the lead guitarist, who knows exactly when to move between acoustic and electric, when a song needed to be warm as caramel and when it needed to explode like the center of a thunderstorm. Cassian, the drummer who never hesitates to experiment beyond the drumset, giving their songs these textured layers that have evolved, sometimes radically, over every year of the band's existence. And Azriel, nicknamed the Shadowsinger from that very first album, for the resonance of his voice and his incredible ability on the bass, as if a jazz legend had been reborn inside a rockstar.