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Ruth’s jaw was tight. ‘Joan, whatever he told you in that room, he only said it so you’d let him out! Don’t you get that? He won’t give us anything useful. And first chance he has, he’ll be out of here, informing on us all!’

‘He won’t,’ Joan said.

‘He informed on his own mother!’

‘He didn’t!’ Joan said. ‘He would never betray anyone like that! She turned to Aaron and was surprised to find his eyes on her, with an expression she’d only seen on him in the other timeline. Like he couldn’t make sense of her, like she was a puzzle to solve.

‘We should bring back the Griffith,’ Ruth said. ‘Olivers always lie.’

Aaron’s gaze hardened as his eyes flicked back to Ruth. ‘Bring in anyone you want,’ he snapped. ‘Olivers aren’t liars! Hunts are!’

‘Don’t talk about my family!’

‘Stop it!’ Joan said, frustrated. They’d bickered like this last time too.

‘Joan, we cannot trust him,’ Ruth said. ‘He’s an Oliver! He’s the worst of the Olivers! The enmity between our families—’

‘—goes back a thousand years!’ Joan said, frustrated. ‘I know! We’ve had this conversation before!’ She wished they’d just let that old enmity go. ‘Next thing he’ll say is that the Hunts are thieves. And you’ll say the Olivers are snaky schemers. And he’ll say no family is allied with the Hunts because we’re just that unlovable. And you’ll say that you don’t understand what the Mtawalis see in his family. And around and around and around. And we need to stop! We need to focus on the real enemy here!’

She paused to catch her breath. Ruth and Aaron both looked rattled, as if they really had been about to recycle all their same arguments from last time. But Ruth was staring at her too; Joan could only have recalled that argument if something very like this conversation had happened before. If Ruth and Joan really had known Aaron before.

‘Listen,’ Joan said. ‘Something really bad is coming. That hole in the world showed it to us. Eleanor told me she had a plan in motion to make it happen.’ She asked Aaron, ‘Did you hear anything else about that other group of guards? About what their orders were?’

Aaron shook his head, a little apologetic.

‘Convenient,’ Ruth said, but all the sharpness was gone. She ducked her head, looking more thoughtful. ‘You never heard any other rumours going around?’ she asked Aaron.

Aaron’s mouth twisted, as if his instinct was to bite back at her. But instead of snapping, he frowned slightly. He was thinking about it. ‘I did hear something else,’ he said slowly.

‘You did?’ Joan said, straightening.

‘I heard that the Alis had been contacted like the Olivers were,’ Aaron said. ‘They were ordered to send adjuncts to assist the guards, but …’ His frown deepened. ‘I never saw an Ali searching for fugitives.’

‘They were with the other group of guards?’ Tom said.

‘Possibly,’ Aaron said. He was still frowning.

‘Why would Eleanor need members of the Ali family?’ Ruth said.

‘To seal things up,’ Joan said. That was the Ali power.

‘Or unseal them,’ Nick said, his voice so low that Joan felt it in her bones. She blinked up at him. It was the first thing he’d said in a while. He stood with his back to the wall. He could have belonged to this era, dressed in his white shirt and dark trousers, except that he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves as if prepared to fight.

Joan felt a tug of unease—and not just about Nick. To seal things up or unseal them.

Joan had been avoiding thinking about the Ali seals and what had been hidden behind them. The truth was, though, that there had been two tears in the timeline in the exact places where she’d used her power—in the café at Covent Garden and the library of Holland House.

For some reason, Tom’s words popped into her head. As he’d crossed the threshold of the seal, he’d sensed the tear in the timeline. There’s something in here. Something wrong.

Those words were too familiar. Something forbidden, a guard had said of Joan’s power. Something wrong.

The room was warm, but Joan found herself folding her arms. For the first time, she made herself face the question that had been at the back of her mind since she’d seen those jagged wounds in the world, hidden behind the Ali seals.

Had she torn those holes in the timeline when she’d used her power?

And if she had … what did that mean?

‘Eleanor wants to create a new timeline where monsters rule,’ Nick said. ‘How would she do that?’