Page 39 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

Through the room’s five viewing slots, Joan could see that the stadium was packed now. As she watched, the roar died down

into near-complete silence—eerie from such a huge crowd.

Joan held her breath, unable to look away. A beat passed, and then another beat, and then a caged wagon slowly emerged from

beneath the arena. It was full of people—twenty at least.

The wagon sat in the middle of the battleground, seeming small and fragile in the huge space. The people inside moaned in fear, begging the crowd for help. Still others rattled at the bars, furious.

Don’t look , Joan told herself. But she couldn’t force her gaze away as the caged walls of the wagon fell to the ground, the thud dampened

by the sand. Around them, the noise of the crowd began to rise as more platforms ascended from below—a dozen of them, carrying

lions and leopards and bears. They weren’t caged. They prowled from their platforms, snarling and growling.

Joan put a hand over her mouth. Moments ago, the humans had been fighting the bars of the cage, but now they huddled back

against each other, terrified. She winced, eyes squeezing shut as the first lion leaped.

Nick’s voice cut through. “Joan.” It was soft—just for her.

She looked up at his dark eyes and realized that he’d positioned himself to block the window. All she could see now was him.

“We can’t help them in this timeline,” he said. “But we can make it so this never happened. We just have to get to Eleanor.”

He was right, she knew. She had to get through this wall.

She tried to focus on the task, but for the next few minutes, she heard sounds that would never leave her. Desperate, pounding

footsteps of people running for their lives. Shrieks of fear and anguish that didn’t sound human. Animals growling and grunting.

The gruesome wet crunching of teeth tearing through flesh and bone, and agonized screams cutting off into horrifying silence.

Coppery blood pierced the heavy incense until it was all Joan could smell.

And maybe the worst of it was the baying of the crowd: their cheers and groans, as if they were watching a football match.

And then somehow the deafening roar rose even further, to thunder—people were cheering in delight. “Semper Regina! Semper

Regina!”

Eleanor was here.

Joan had to see her. She scrambled from the widening hole she’d been creating just in time to see Eleanor striding to her

seat in the imperial box. In profile she was a queen from a fairy tale—swan-necked, in a heavy crown, her golden hair rippling

down her shoulders.

Joan peered, trying to make out if her hair was moving in the breeze. Was she really here, or was this a recording, as Cassius

and Finn had believed?

Eleanor stepped to the edge of the imperial box. She was elevated about ten feet above the grounds of the arena. Close enough

that a lion could have scaled the wall to her. The colosseum of Rome had had high nets to protect emperors from the wild animals

and stray spears. No such net protected Eleanor. Did that mean this was just a projection?

No... There was a slight soap-bubble sheen right in front of the box. A near-invisible protective barrier between Eleanor

and the arena. “I see an Ali shield,” she whispered. Ruth drew a sharp breath beside her. “She is here.”

Nick looked at Jamie, whose eyes had gone very wide. “You were right .”

“Welcome!” Eleanor said now, her voice crisp, almost intimate, over the loudspeaker.

“Every fifty years, I appear before you—my beloved subjects—to celebrate the anniversary of my reign. Every fifty years, I gift you with a spectacle beyond all those previous. And this year, the spectacle will be the greatest yet.”

Her golden head turned toward the Oliver stands, and Joan shivered, suddenly sure that Eleanor had just sought out and noted

Aaron’s presence. He was still in the same seat, above the Oliver banner, his posture upright and stiff.

And then Eleanor turned the other way, and Joan’s breath caught. For a second, she seemed to be looking directly at Joan.

“Those who fight and die today honor us all!” she said.

Eleanor couldn’t see inside the chamber, Joan told herself. It was too dark in here, surely. Still, she hurried back to work,

unnerved by the illusion of Eleanor’s gaze.

She was almost done with this wall in any case—the hole was nearly three feet deep already. It wouldn’t take more than a couple

of minutes to get through.

She crawled back into the cave-like space of it, sliding uncomfortably on the sticky clay, and splayed her hands against the

brick.

Her fingers sank in. She kept pushing through, trying to reach the other side—to reach clear air. But instead, her hands just

stopped . She’d hit something unyielding. Something that didn’t melt or crumble.

Something her power didn’t work on.

“What’s wrong?” Nick said.

“I—I don’t know,” Joan said. But her heart was already pounding. She grabbed the trowel from Tom and scraped away a thin layer of clay. She reached into the hole and gasped as her fingers stopped, just before the wall. “No,” she breathed. “No, no, no.”

“What is it?” Ruth said.

“There’s a barrier here.” An invisible one with no temperature or texture—it felt more like magnetic resistance than an object.

Joan squeezed her eyes shut, frustration and desperation rising in her throat.

If she couldn’t get through to Eleanor...

Nick reached in, hand beside Joan’s, and hit the same obstruction. He looked at Joan, eyes huge and alarmed.

“I think it’s Eleanor’s Ali shield,” Joan said hoarsely. She’d thought that the shield only enclosed Eleanor herself, but

now Joan pictured it surrounding the imperial box completely. “What are we going to do ? We have to stop her!”

“I can break it,” Ruth said. She’d broken through Ali seals before.

But Ruth and Joan both worked on the barrier for more than an hour—Ruth using the Hunt power, and Joan the Grave one. Whoever

had made this barrier had been far stronger than they were. Joan could hear Ruth starting to breathe harshly. Her own heart

was pounding harder and harder—from the exertion of it, but also from fear. None of them knew how many deaths it would take

before Eleanor could lock the timeline. It could be an hour away or five minutes away.

“You have to stop,” Nick interjected finally.

“No,” Joan said.

“ Yes ,” Nick said. His face was drawn with concern, and Joan realized he wasn’t just worried about reaching Eleanor; he was worried about her . “You’re already depleted, and this isn’t working.”

“We have to get through!” Joan said. They all knew the stakes.

“Joan...”

Joan felt a surge of pure despair. She looked out at the carnage in the arena for the first time since the battles had started.

Blood darkened the sand. People lay dead and dying with injuries beyond anything Joan had imagined. Some were being eaten

alive.... And the smell... Bile rose. She squeezed her eyes shut, but that only brought the stink of incense and blood

to the forefront. For one terrible moment, all she could see was Gran bleeding out under her hands.

A warm touch on her shoulder. Joan blinked up and found Nick looking down at her.

“ Look! ” Jamie said.

Joan followed his pointing finger to the empty air above the arena. Only it wasn’t empty. A lone, thread-thin glimmer of silver

floated in the air above the stadium. A hairline fracture in the timeline. The beginning of a new tear. It was proof that

they were right about Eleanor’s plan—and that the plan was working. She was weakening the timeline right in front of them.

“We’re almost out of time,” Tom said.

Jamie frowned at the Ali barrier inside the wall. “Eleanor will have to drop that shield when she locks the timeline. You

can break the wall down then .”

“There won’t be time,” Tom said. “There’s two walls between us and the chamber. It took Joan nearly an hour to get through the first one. Even with the shield gone, it’ll take the same again to get through the second wall. Eleanor will have locked the timeline by then.”

“We need to try something else,” Nick said. “We have to get to her.”

Think , Joan told herself fiercely. Don’t give up. Think. How could they get to Eleanor if not from below?

She searched the crowd for her sister. Eleanor wasn’t visible now—she’d stepped back into the recess of the imperial box.

Only people directly in front of her had a view of her.

“There is no way to get to her,” Ruth said flatly. “This timeline will be the final timeline. Eleanor’s won.”

“No,” Joan said, realizing. There was a way. Jamie had said that Eleanor would need to drop her shield when she locked the timeline. She’d be vulnerable to someone

positioned directly in front of her.

She’d be vulnerable from the arena.