Page 1 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

“We have to get out of here,” Joan said. They were all crammed together in a dead-end alley, but they couldn’t linger. A patrolling

guard was making his way along the river walk, a gold pin marking him from the scattered people on the path. “There’s a guard—”

“I see him,” Nick said grimly.

“There are two .” Aaron indicated a slight woman farther up the embankment, a hint of gold glinting at her collar. Joan hadn’t clocked her

at all.

A cold wind blew across the river, cutting through Joan’s gauze dress. She wished she still had her coat, but she’d had to

dump it last night, and there was no way to retrieve it now. She folded her arms as she surveyed the guards, the unfamiliar

skyline. Where could they go?

On the other side of the Thames, glass towers reflected the thunderous sky. A tinted image shimmered in one of them: a sea

serpent engulfing a sailing ship. Monster sigils were everywhere now: winged lions and serpents emblazoned on buildings, rippling

on flags. A reminder that the world didn’t belong to humans anymore.

Now monsters reigned.

Joan turned to Jamie. “Do you think your family would help us?” The Lius would remember the previous timeline. Surely they’d take them in.

The wind lifted Jamie’s smooth black hair. He’d seemed lost in his head since Tom had vanished, but he made a visible effort

to focus now. “Liu territory is just across the river. If we can get there—”

The rest of his words were swallowed by the nearby rumble of an engine. Joan and the others retreated instinctively into the

shadows as a hearse-black boat emerged from under London Bridge, its pace the slow menace of a patrol. The golden lion of

the Monster Court stood stark on its flank, teeth and claws bared in attack.

Joan’s cousin Ruth swore under her breath. “Well, we can’t stay here.”

Beside Joan, Nick shifted, a muscle jumping in his jaw. Joan knew what he was thinking. The last time they’d sought refuge

with the Lius, Nick had been restrained, his mind controlled. Joan half expected him to argue now, but after a beat he just

nodded. “Let’s go,” he said.

They slipped into the thin crowd, trying to blend in, trying not to look like the fugitives they were.

Joan knew she should keep her head down, but she couldn’t resist another glance across the river. This new London was a strange

beast. Dark smoke drifted from chimneys and settled in the sky in a gloomy pall. Familiar landmarks were gone—Tower Bridge,

St. Paul’s dome. In their place was a new skyline of Gothic spikes and soaring glass.

A few hundred paces to the west, London Bridge straddled the river. Not the practical concrete bridge Joan knew but the one Eleanor must have dragged here—Old London Bridge, its houses and shops quaint and strange, like a miniature Shakespearean village on the Thames.

Here, on the walkway, a man strolled by in a Roman tunic, and then a woman in a medieval gown, the heavy velvet sweeping the

pavement. It was clear that monsters had no fear of discovery anymore.

Joan swallowed. All of this was wrong. It was wrong . This world wasn’t supposed to exist. Her sister, Eleanor, had seized control of the timeline, reforging it into one where

monsters ruled. And Eleanor had used Joan and Nick to do it. She’d put a gun to Joan’s head, and given Nick a choice: Joan

or the world.

Joan had known what Nick would do. She’d been so sure. Nick had been a legendary monster slayer: the human hero who killed the predators among them. Given a choice between dooming

humans and saving Joan, he’d only ever do one thing. Joan had closed her eyes, waiting for death.

But Nick had chosen Joan.

Joan tried and failed to catch his gaze now. He was on the far side of the path, walking with Jamie and Ruth, a dark flick

of hair concealing his expression. Joan had the feeling he was avoiding her. She didn’t blame him. He had to be regretting

his decision—now that he’d seen all of this.

“Hey,” Aaron murmured, falling into step beside her.

Joan tried to smile at him. “I keep expecting to be arrested.” Or worse.

Aaron feigned a neck stretch to check on the guards. “They’re still just patrolling,” he reassured her. “They don’t know we’re here.”

Joan nodded. A part of her couldn’t believe Aaron was here. For months, she’d held the memory of him quiet and close. In the privacy of her own mind, she’d conjured that posh

sprawling-mansion, boarding-school voice, never believing she’d actually hear him speak again. She hadn’t wanted him to be

in danger like this—to be on the run with her again. And yet some part of her was horribly, selfishly glad to be back with

him.

Aaron ran a tired hand through his golden hair. Sometimes, it was hard to see beyond his otherworldly beauty, but Joan knew

him well enough to register the dark circles under his eyes, the gray tinge to his complexion. When had he last slept? When

had any of them?

“You okay?” Aaron asked.

Joan had been about to ask him that. “Are you ?”

“Oh yeah. I love what your sister’s done with the place.”

Joan’s breath came out in a huffed laugh, surprising her. “It’s like Dracula made a city. All dark clouds and spikes.” As

she spoke, she heard the plod of approaching footsteps. She swallowed and adjusted her hair, keeping her neck covered.

Underfoot, the stone tiles were storm gray. Aaron’s own footsteps were soothingly even against them. A steady heartbeat. Joan

tried to focus on that as she walked, and not on the crawling feeling at her nape.

She’d been around monsters before, of course—she was half-monster herself.

Aaron, Ruth, and Jamie were monsters. But.

.. as soon as she’d woken in this new world, some animal part of her had sensed a change; had almost been able to smell musk on the wind, beneath the smoke and river brine of the city.

Her body had known instinctively and immediately that she was no longer at the top of the food chain.

On the other side of the path, Nick’s posture was deceptively casual. He felt it too, though. When a man in a judge-like wig

pushed past, Nick’s eyes darted to his hands, tracking him until he was out of reach.

Joan succumbed to the prickle at the back of her neck and glanced over her shoulder. The black-cloaked guard was getting closer.

She increased her pace, catching Ruth’s gaze as she did. Ruth nodded, whispering to Nick and Jamie.

They were almost at the bridge now. Ahead, a steep stone staircase led up to its southern limit, marked by a massive building—a

castle in its own right—that seemed to cast a shadow over the entire city.

“The Stone Gate,” Aaron said.

Spikes protruded from the gate’s crowning turrets: dark balls on spindly sticks, swaying in the wind. “What are those things?”

Joan wondered aloud. Weather vanes? But there were so many of them....

Aaron drew a sharp breath. “Your sister is a piece of work.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it. Don’t look at them.”

“They’re like rotting vegetables,” Joan said. “Like—” She stopped. The breeze had carried a faint scent of decay.

Mr. Larch, her history teacher, had once talked about Old London Bridge: They displayed traitors’ heads on spikes — dipped in tar to slow the rot.

“Joan,” Aaron said softly. “You can’t stare—not in a place like this. You’ll invite questions. People will think you know

someone on the turrets.”

Joan dragged her gaze back to him, feeling sick and horribly naive. She hadn’t even realized that there were people up there, let alone that she was endangering herself and the others by staring at them.

Aaron’s gray eyes were the shade of the storm clouds above. He’d seen sights like this before, she realized—in the Middle

Ages, maybe, or the Renaissance,periods when traitors’ heads on a bridge were no more notable than boats on the Thames.

Joan had never been so aware of her own sheltered upbringing. She’d been born and raised in the safety of twenty-first-century

Milton Keynes and London. She’d never seen a man hanged, or a body displayed in warning. She’d never imagined that London

could be transformed into this , its ancient cruelties brought back.

And... She glanced again at the north bank, at the open display of monster sigils. In a world where monsters ruled over

humans, what new cruelties had emerged?

“Let’s get to the bridge,” she said. The sooner they were on the north bank, in Liu territory, the sooner they’d be safe.

And then they could figure out how to fix all this.

“What in the medieval hell? ?” Ruth said as they all hurried up the stone stairs to the bridge. “This whole city has bad vibes.”

Her voice was half-drowned by the roar of water. The staircase had placed them by the bridge’s wooden supports, huge pillars

that churned the river into rapids. Eleanor had once described this noise as a hundred waterfalls. To Joan, though, it sounded

more like the ocean: water smashing against rocks and cliffs.

Above them, on the bridge, a gold-and-peacock-colored banner welcomed travelers: eleanor, semper regina! celebrate her jubilee!

“Semper Regina?” Nick said dryly. “How do you have a jubilee if you’re always queen?”

“I heard someone talking about her on the walkway,” Ruth said. “She makes her subjects celebrate her rule every fifty years.

Huge celebrations.” To Joan, she said: “No offense, but your sister’s a total narcissist.”

Eleanor’s not my sister , Joan wanted to say. Because no sister of Joan’s would have tortured and murdered people she loved. No sister of hers would

have created a timeline where humans suffered under monster rule.

“Can we opine more discreetly about the queen of this godforsaken place?” Aaron hissed. “Last thing I want is to be a head

on a turret!”

“Doubt anyone can hear us over this din,” Jamie said. “Plus, we’re the only ones on the staircase.”

Joan looked down. The walkway below was full of people, but Jamie was right. No one had followed them up. They could talk