Page 42 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

Joan wanted to scream. Instead, she pulled the pins from her hair, trying to still her shaking hands. Nick had known she’d

be able to pick the lock—but not fast enough to stop him.

She got the lock open and shoved through the cage door, then dove toward the panel, trying to call back the platform. But

Nick had jammed it somehow. The controls wouldn’t move. Joan slammed her hand down, frustrated and sick to her soul. She could

still feel his mouth on hers, as if he were still here.

She needed to see what was going on.

She scrambled up to the ground level above. The first chamber with a view showed a nightmare. Against a backdrop of scaled-down

skyscrapers and gray London streets, dozens of gladiators and prisoners were fighting for their lives with swords and spears

and axes. People were strewn on the ground, some dead, some groaning in agony.

The crowd was a roar, the noise drowning out screams of pain when weapons struck flesh.

Joan put a hand over her mouth. Where was Nick? He should have been right here—he couldn’t have landed more than a few paces

away. Was he already dead? She felt like she was going to be sick.

No, there — Relief flooded her. He was darting between buildings, trying to get closer to the imperial box, about a hundred yards away. He ducked a thrown knife, picked it up, and then he was out of sight behind one of the skyscrapers.

As Joan looked, iron spikes shot up from the ground, thick as fence posts, the tips lethally sharp. The gladiatorthey’d seen

earlier—Bull—was caught in the foot. He swore and then cried out as the spike retracted into the ground, pulling flesh with

it.

Joan squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, trying not to picture Nick being stabbed like that. She had to know, though. She opened her eyes, searching desperately again.

She spotted him running back toward the wounded Bull. He’d found a piece of cloth—someone’s shirt, Joan guessed. He wrapped

the gladiator’s foot with quick, sure movements, seeming unafraid that the man might kill him. Joan didn’t know why he was

so confident of that. Plenty of gladiators were killing gladiators. When he was done, he shoved the man into one of the buildings,

steadying the knife in the man’s hand.

Okay? Joan saw him say.

There was no helping the other people who’d been skewered. Most of them had been injured already, had been lying on the street

when the spikes had come up.

As Joan thought that, she realized the crowd’s attention was shifting, and so were the sounds. One by one, heads were tilting

up.

Above, the tear in the timeline had grown. A short time ago, it had been the size of a football. Now it filled about a third

of the visible sky, the wide mouth of it like the jaws of a snarling animal. And inside... Joan shuddered. Inside the tear,

the shadows of the void writhed.

More screams sounded—not from the fighters now, but the crowd itself. The audience was terrified.

The fighters had stopped too. Everyone was staring up at the sky. The people on the battleground were all human, and couldn’t

sense what the monsters in the crowd could sense. But the horror of the tear—and the shadows inside it—was undeniable.

Joan could feel it—the unnatural wrongness of the exposed void, the endless emptiness that lay beyond the timeline. For a dizzying

moment, she could almost sense a strange hunger from the shadows. As if something might crawl out of the tear, eager to consume

them all.

Whispers and cries flew across the stadium as people tried to make sense of what was happening.

Eleanor stood then, hushing the crowd. She raised her hands to the sky. The sheen of her shield vanished, and Joan knew that

the real battle of the day was about to begin.The battle between Eleanor and the timeline.

And it was a battle. Joan could feel the sheer force of Eleanor’s will, the weight of her new godlike power, as Eleanor fought the impossible

might of the timeline, dragging it toward her like someone roping a wild horse. In return, the great beast wrenched back,

fighting its leash, refusing to be caged. Eleanor might have wounded it, but it was still strong enough to fight.

As Eleanor’s beautiful face contorted with effort, her full attention on the battle, Joan saw movement in the arena.

A lone figure sprinted toward the imperial box. Joan gasped, her heart in her throat. It was Nick.

Without changing pace, Nick threw a spear at Eleanor’s chest.

Joan followed its path, hope rising. Could this be it? Could this be the moment they took back the timeline?

But Eleanor’s personal shield shot back up just in time to divert the blade. Joan gasped. The shield hadn’t manifested all

at once. The diverted spear had managed to graze Eleanor’s arm, and blood streaked her pale skin.

The crowd exclaimed in mixed shock and horror; until this moment, they’d still believed Eleanor to be a hologram. But now

the blood on her arm made it clear to everyone that she was here in the flesh.

And someone had managed to wound her—a supposedly all-powerful goddess.

Eleanor stumbled back, searching for the source of the attack. She fixed on Nick at the base of the box, breathing fast. He’d

scared her.

Nick took his silver mask off, revealing his face, and Eleanor took another step back, visibly shaken.

Rumblings sounded across the stadium. The audience had recognized him. Even from down here, Joan could hear the words. “ Nick Ward! The Gladiator! ”

“You—” Eleanor sounded out of breath. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

“I was dead!” Nick had raised his voice, and it rang now around the stadium, unexpectedly clear. The arena must have been built

with acoustics in mind. Perhaps gladiators gave speeches when they won, or when they begged for mercy. “I came back to stop

you!”

He’s popular among the humans , Eleanor had told Aaron. Joan hadn’t understood how popular Nick had been until this moment. He was gaining a shield of his own now.

From the battleground, people were running and limping toward him. Gladiators and criminals. Humans. Joan spotted the injured Bull among them. They clustered around Nick, protecting him.

The stadium was pin-drop silent. Joan had the feeling that if Nick said the word, all the humans in the stadium would riot—everyone

in the arena, on the uppermost levels of the stands. Every worker in the building.

Eleanor seemed aware of that too, because she didn’t give the guards the order to seize him. She turned again, seeking Aaron

this time.

In the Oliver stands, Aaron’s posture was the picture of confusion, and Joan saw Eleanor tilt her head; she wasn’t sure if

that confusion was feigned or real.

“We seem to be at a stalemate,” Nick called to Eleanor—Joan had the feeling he was deliberately pulling her attention back

from Aaron. “You need to lock down the timeline. And you can’t do it from behind that barrier.”

“Perhaps,” Eleanor said.

“I don’t think you have long to decide,” Nick added, “because that ”—he gestured at the jagged tear in the timeline above them—“doesn’t look very stable to me.” The killings in the arena had

stopped, but the tear was still visibly widening. “My bet is that it’ll keep growing until you lock the timeline.”

“We are at a stalemate, then,” Eleanor agreed. “Because I don’t think you want the world to end any more than I do.”

Nick didn’t answer. Instead, he took a step back and then ran at the wall, scaling it and the overhanging balcony of the imperial box as easily as climbing a ladder.

There was a collective gasp from the crowd as he landed in front of Eleanor.

It was a superhuman feat—the wall had to be fifty feet high at least. Nick really did still have his abilities.

A guard came at him, gun raised, and Nick disarmed him like a magic trick. One second the gun was in the man’s hand, and the

next it was in Nick’s, and the man was on the ground.

Nick dealt with three more guards just as quickly. When he was done, it was just him and Eleanor on the balcony. He aimed

the gun at Eleanor’s chest.

A dozen guards rushed up into the box behind Eleanor, stopped by Eleanor’s raised hand. They couldn’t get to Nick unless she

dropped the shield.

“No scars,” Eleanor said to Nick slowly. “You’re not the Nick of this timeline.” She looked around. “Where’s my sister?”

Joan stepped closer to the window, wanting to answer her. I’m here . Fight me .

Nick answered. “She didn’t make it,” he lied. “I was the only one who arrived here.” His voice was still clear. Joan wasn’t

sure if it was the acoustics of the stadium, or if he was close enough to Eleanor that her microphone was picking up his voice.

“How terribly sad,” Eleanor said. “Because she died here as an infant.”

Nick’s answer was a low growl of warning. “I won’t discuss her with you.”

Frustration and terror surged through Joan. Was there anything she could do from here? Create a distraction? Get into the arena herself? She couldn’t think of anything that would help and not make things worse....

Nick shifted his weight. Eleanor’s mention of Joan seemed to have gotten to him. Joan’s chest tightened. Standing up there,

alone with Eleanor, he looked so much like the Nick she’d first met in the Holland House library. The boy with the dark eyes

and solemn smile. Joan hadn’t known then that they were soul mates of a kind—that they’d been together in the true timeline.

“You were with her in the original timeline,” Eleanor said, echoing Joan’s thoughts now.

Joan shivered at the malicious note in her voice. She was starting to feel unnerved. Eleanor had made no move to drop the

shield, and the writhing shadows of the void above were moving faster, as if getting restless.

“Every timeline since that first one has yearned for that original shape,” Eleanor said. “That’s why you and Joan kept meeting

each other, in timeline after timeline.” Her tone was almost intimate now, as if she’d forgotten their audience. “But all