Page 20 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

car of the Olivers. An Oliver flag fluttered on the bumper: a mermaid with sharp teeth and fingers curved into claws.

As a servant hurried up and opened the doors, Lucien tilted his head. “Where is your signet ring?” he said to Aaron.

Aaron took a moment too long to answer. “I... must have misplaced it.”

Lucien frowned, and Joan felt herself tensing out of nowhere—the smallest details here kept feeling like tests that could

be passed or failed. “I shall have the house searched for it.”

“So... Aaron’s a serial killer here,” Ruth said when they were all crammed in the car, Jamie, Joan, and Ruth in the back with Frankie; Nick and Aaron at the front. “Loving this world.”

“I’m sure your counterpart’s a real peach,” Aaron said tightly. Ruth’s words didn’t usually cut him particularly deeply, but

Joan could tell he was upset about what Lucien had said.

Joan glanced in the rearview mirror as Aaron pulled away. Lucien was watching them, still frowning. “Do you think he sensed

something was off?”

“I should have known about the signet ring,” Aaron said. “My father used to wear one.”

“It wasn’t just that,” Ruth said. “It was how Joan and Nick are dressed—with their necks covered. And how they acted. Lucien

kept looking at them like he was confused by them—like they were standing wrong, walking wrong.”

“ Standing wrong?” Nick said.

“You don’t hold yourself like the other humans here,” Ruth said. “You’re not wary enough. Not scared enough.”

Joan swallowed. She’d felt pretty damn scared since they’d arrived here, and it had barely been a day. And if they didn’t

fix this timeline, she’d be here for as long as they lived. Maybe after a few years here, she’d be cowed too.

Aaron’s gaze caught Joan’s in the rearview mirror as if she’d spoken aloud. His mouth was a flat line.

He turned from the hedge road into Richmond proper. In the daylight, it was starkly different from the version Joan knew.

Rows of Georgian terraces were arrayed behind iron fences, elaborately decorated with gilded mermaids and fish. Oliver flags

alternated with Court lions along the street.

Chiswick flitted past. Then Hammersmith. The shops of the high streets were artisan: cobblers and florists and seamstresses. No familiar brands. No billboards. The buildings ranged from distinctly Georgian to not quite Victorian in style.

“I can’t get a grip on this world,” Joan said.

Beside her, Ruth grunted. “It’s wrong,” she agreed.

“No, I mean—” Something had been nagging at Joan since she’d arrived here. “It doesn’t make sense. The buildings, the technology...

This car is electric.” It was scentless and near silent. “And there are security cameras here. Video calls. Skyscrapers.”

“What are you talking about?” Ruth said. “Our world had all that.”

“ Our world wasn’t ruled by monsters. Who invented this car? Why is that building”—Joan pointed—“still recognizably Georgian? Who

designed all this stuff? The subjugated humans?” Joan doubted that . How could invention and design have remained so similar in a world where the humans who’d have done the inventing were so

casually mistreated and killed?

“Huh.” The sound came from deep in Nick’s chest. He frowned at the view too, as disturbed now as Joan.

“I read those Crown History books back at the inn,” Jamie said. “The Court’s official version of history here. According to them, Eleanor invented a lot

of stuff herself.”

Joan rolled her eyes. “They used to say that about historical emperors.” Eleanor twisted the timeline beyond recognition , Gran had said. She created a world that was never supposed to exist.

To Joan, it seemed like Eleanor had willed this timeline into existence, ignoring the logical path of history. She’d created a Frankenstein’s monster of a world with technology and architecture that pleased her.

Joan found herself thinking of the tear from last night. With her next breath, she smelled a faint trace of decay. It wasn’t

a real scent—she was sure of it. It was her monster sense telling her that something was wrong with this timeline. Couldn’t

the people here feel it?

Execution Dock loomed out of the mist, on the stinking pebbled foreshore of the Thames. Joan felt like she’d stepped into

the past. In her timeline, this site had fallen out of use in the early 1800s. Before that, though, it had been used for executions

for four hundred years.

Her footsteps made sucking puddles as she walked by the lapping water with Aaron and Nick. Jamie and Ruth had already peeled

away. The two of them would try to elicit some gossip from the crowd. They needed as much information as they could get about

Eleanor, about the wolves.

The tide was rising. Ahead, there was scaffolding for hanging—or perhaps for gibbetting—but it seemed disused. Instead, two

prisoners lay face down on concrete blocks, their hands and feet tied to heavy metal loops anchored in the concrete.

Joan shivered. She’d failed to save Ronan last night, and she felt a wave of urgency now. Whether these prisoners could help

them to get to Eleanor or not, Joan and the others couldn’t let them die here. It would just be wrong.

Aaron surveyed the scene as they walked, his expression as dangerous and authoritative as his counterpart’s.

Their plan today was for him to lean on his position—to demand that the prisoners be brought to the Oliver house for further interrogation.

And surely that would work. They’d seen last night just how powerful Aaron was in this timeline.

Even the Court Guards had been afraid of him.

As they approached the prisoners, Joan was startled to recognize the red-haired man from yesterday—the one who’d run from

the guards on the bridge. He knelt beside a woman with a bob of dark hair, her freckled features so like his that Joan guessed

they were siblings.

A small, dismal crowd had gathered—mostly children and a couple of staggering drunks. A pub’s balcony overlooked the dock,

and more people watched from there, drinks in hand. The pub protruded over the foreshore, supported by wooden stilts. The Pelican was written in gold letters on the balcony’s railing.

A woman held up a fist full of papers: “Last dying speeches! The prisoners repent! Read their last confessions!”

The transcribed speeches were almost certainly fake, but Joan looked at Aaron. He nodded and tossed the woman a coin. Joan

took one of the sheets from her.

The True Confession of Aelfraed Hugh, a Human of Argent Territory

I, Aelfraed Hugh, confess to the depraved crime of High Treason against Queen and Court. I conspired with those who would

harm our gracious Queen and deserve to be punished by—

Joan skimmed down. It was definitely fake—a groveling apology for a vague crime; a plea for punishment to atone.

“Ah! Lord Oliver!” A man strode toward them from the waterman’s stairs. He had pale goggling eyes and an overlarge suit that

hung from his frame. Joan thought, irresistibly, of Mr. Toad from The Wind in the Willows . He breezed past Joan and Nick as if they weren’t there, and clapped Aaron on the shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking—Cassius

Argent, always late! But I think this time, old chap, you’re uncharacteristically early!”

Above them, on the waterman’s stairs, the burnt-elm banner flapped in the wind. This greeting was some kind of monster etiquette,

Joan realized. Cassius must be the head of the Argent family—he wore a signet ring on his left hand. Aaron saw it. He put

his own hands behind his back self-consciously.

Cassius grasped the ball of Aaron’s shoulder, beaming at the thin crowd. “The man of the moment!” he boomed in the manner

of a theater actor. “The new head of the Oliver family! The man who struck down the leader of the wolves!”

The new head of the family? That was interesting, Joan thought, as scattered applause started and stopped. It sounded like Aaron’s

counterpart had only just overthrown his father. But that also meant his position was more tenuous than they’d assumed.

Nick shifted his weight. His dark eyes met Joan’s, and she nodded in acknowledgment. Eleanor had suggested the possibility

of an attack by wolves today. It was Joan and Nick’s task to scan the crowd.

Joan found it surprisingly easy to survey the people around them; people’s gazes glided right over her when they saw the pendant, as if the rest of her wasn’t there.

The crowd was a mix of monsters and humans, and they all seemed curious or bored or drunk.

No sharp eyes, no too-long looks. If there were any rebels among the onlookers, they were blending in too well for Joan to spot them.

“Right, then!” Cassius said. “Formalities dispelled! Let’s get it done and get up to the pub! I fancy a steak—what about you?”

He gestured Aaron toward the prisoners.

They were just a few feet from them, and they’d been cruelly bound to the cement blocks, the ropes so tight that they’d cut

off circulation, whitening their hands and feet. The red-haired man was starting to panic now, his breath coming in fast sips.

Beside him, his sister took deep, shaky breaths, clearly trying to calm herself.

Aaron glanced at them and then away, looking pale himself. “I, uh... I need to speak to the prisoners,” he said to Cassius.

He clearly heard the awkward note in his own words, and tried again, infusing his voice with his counterpart’s easy arrogance.

“I need to interrogate them further—back at the Oliver house.”

Cassius seemed puzzled by the request. “No need for that. I’ve been interrogating them with two Griffiths. I sent you the

full transcript of their confessions. Nothing useful. As we know, the wolf cells aren’t aware of each other. They never even

met Nick Ward in person.” He had a posh accent, like Aaron’s. But where Aaron’s made Joan think of boarding schools, Cassius’s

made her think of boorish laughs and hunting parties.

“Nevertheless... ,” Aaron said.