Page 48 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

Aaron drove them from the stadium along dark roads still strewn with rose petals. Joan could sense roiling emotion under his

usual ice-cold surface.

“I’m here,” she said to him. “With you.” She couldn’t bring herself to say even if he’s alive . Nick wasn’t alive. “Whatever happens, I choose you.”

Aaron’s elegant fingers tapped at the wheel. He stopped at the lights, waiting for no one—the street was dead. “I hope he

is alive,” he said to Joan. “Please don’t think I wish otherwise.” The grind in his voice, though, made Joan’s chest tighten,

and when the lights turned green again, the car jumped as if he’d pushed too hard on the gas.

Outside, the dark streets of Eleanor’s London rolled by. It was an airless evening. The burnt-elm banners of the Argents were

limp on their posts, and the leaves of the plane trees were still.

Joan shut her eyes. This speculation was too painful. Nick was dead. She’d seen him die. She’d seen him fall with her own eyes. He was dead .

Aaron was quiet beside her. Joan could feel his tension, even with her eyes closed.

It’ll always be him for you. Whatever happened, Joan had the terrible, sinking feeling that Aaron would forever view himself as her second choice, and she didn’t know how to change that.

She’d met Nick first. She’d loved him first, and Aaron knew it.

But she loved Aaron too. And it was the same desperate, wrenching love.

“The thing is... ,” Aaron said softly. “Even if he is dead now, we might have the chance to bring him back. If the timeline isn’t locked, we might still be able to repair it.

He’d be alive again in the new iteration.” Joan turned to stare at him. For some reason, that hadn’t occurred to her. “The

timeline would bring the two of you back together as it always does,” Aaron said. “But as for you and me...” He hesitated.

“We’ll likely forget each other.”

He was watching the road, his knuckles white on the wheel, and Joan realized that he’d been turning the prospect over in his

mind ever since they’d seen the tear at the colosseum.

“I—I didn’t forget you last time.” She didn’t even know how to address the idea of Nick returning in the next timeline.

Aaron flicked her an oddly gentle look. He didn’t answer, but Joan heard his unsaid response. He’d forgotten her .

“I’ll create a bubble around us like when Eleanor attacked us. We’ll both remember.”

“You might not have the chance or choice,” he said softly.

“I love you,” Joan said. “When you forgot me last time—” The word caught behind the sudden lump in her throat. It had been worse than

she’d imagined. She couldn’t let that happen again.

Aaron seemed to hear the new distress in her voice. He glanced at her and shifted his grip on the gearstick to take her hand. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “Sometimes my mind jumps ahead too far. It’s probably not worth speculating about— We don’t even know if we can still fix the timeline.”

Joan swallowed. He’d stopped at another set of lights. Outside, a slight breeze had started, lifting the leaves and rippling

through the territory banners. They were still surrounded by the withered elms of the Argents, but Joan saw that the next

street to the north had flags with dragonara serpents. The Chimera Inn had been in Portelli territory, she remembered.

Aaron hadn’t been able to get through the crowds to the rendezvous earlier in the day, but the roads were empty now.

“We should find the others,” she said. “They’ll be wondering where we are.”

Aaron sighed. “If your cousin says one word about what I’m wearing...” But he signaled right, and turned.

It was still dark when they arrived at the Chimera Inn, an old-fashioned pub with bright blue paint that stood out from its

dour neighbors like a tropical bird among crows. There was no name on the building, just a sign hanging from a wrought-iron

bracket with elaborate curls. It displayed a beautifully hand-painted creature with a dragon’s hind and a lion’s head, breathing

a puff of fire.

Joan pushed open the door, and a bell jangled from above, announcing their entrance. The room was small, with oak paneling.

A few tables and chairs were clustered around a blazing hearth and a hanging pot that smelled pleasantly of a smoky stew.

Stacked bowls and a pile of spoons suggested that people could help themselves to food.

Just one of the tables was occupied. The man there barely glanced up as Joan and Aaron walked in. Tom had suggested the Chimera Inn because its customers minded their own business—much like those at the Serpentine.

The lamps were unlit along the walls; the room, though, was afternoon-bright. Joan realized why when she glanced over her

shoulder. Instead of the evening street they’d left, the windows showed a daytime view of Shakespearean buildings on a cobbled

street. The window was Portelli glass. A one-way view of another time.

Joan drew a wondering breath as a woman walked past carrying a basket full of carrots and onions. Her gray-streaked hair was

pulled into a bun, with ringlets framing her lined face. The monster world was so strange sometimes—this woman was long, long

dead and couldn’t have known that monsters were watching her from a window that didn’t even exist in her time.

“Looks like 1665, or maybe 1666. Just before the fire,” Aaron murmured, and Joan stared at the scene with new eyes. That street

was less than a year from destruction, and the whole city was in the grip of the Great Plague. One in five Londoners would

die of it. “It looks just like our 1600s,” Aaron added, forehead creasing. “No changes from Eleanor yet.”

“Jamie said that our timeline didn’t really diverge from this one until the 1800s.”

“She must have had a hand in this timeline earlier than that,” Aaron said. “By this period”—he nodded at the window—“the spire of St. Paul’s had already fallen to fire. The dome we know should have been built

a couple of years after this.”

The image of Eleanor secretly and slowly changing the skyline to suit her own tastes creeped Joan out.

More than that, she felt a tingle of primal warning at the tip of her spine.

Eleanor always played the longest games, and Joan had the unsettling feeling she was still playing now somehow. That her plans weren’t over yet.

Joan folded her arms around herself, pushing Eleanor from her mind. Eleanor had hurt them all enough. Joan didn’t even want

to think about her unless she had to.

A flight of dark stairs at the back of the room led to a short corridor with numbered doors on both sides. At the third door

on the left, there was an unobtrusive mark in chalk on the floor—a circle with a dot inside it. The Hunt sign for Safe . Joan released the breath she’d been holding. If the others had been captured, Ruth would have done her best to scrub off

that mark as she’d been dragged away.

Joan scratched at the door rather than knocking—not wanting to make too much noise in the middle of the night. After a moment,

it opened a crack, and Tom’s crooked nose appeared, along with the tip of a knife.

“Did you get lost ?” he hissed, pulling Joan and Aaron inside. He gave the corridor a sweeping look, then closed the door again, locking it

behind them.

Two small windows showed the seventeenth-century street they’d seen downstairs.

Disconcertingly, the view up here was evening rather than afternoon—with no street lighting.

Joan peered out and saw a flame bobbing up and down in the middle of the road.

The small figure of a child was holding a torch, guiding a group of people to the pub across the street.

The rest of the room was basic. It was a single space with built-in bunks along the walls, each with a privacy curtain. Opposite

the windows was a small countertop, just large enough for a sink with taps and a kettle. There was no bathroom—Joan guessed

there was a shared one at the end of the hall outside.

Ruth rolled out of the nearest bed. She’d been snuggled up with Frankie and Sylvie.

“You’re late!” she scolded, pulling Joan into a hug. “Where have you been?”

“Sorry,” Joan said. “We... Well...” A flush crept up her neck. She and Aaron had been in his bed.

“We couldn’t get here earlier,” Aaron said coolly. “We had to wait for the crowds to die down.” His face seemed harder than

it had been even a few minutes ago. He’d pulled his mask on again. Not his counterpart’s, but the one Joan had always known

him to wear; the one that made people think he was superior and cold. Joan hadn’t realized he’d removed it for her these last

few hours. Not until this moment.

Jamie sighed. “Took us ages to get here too.” He was sitting on the bunk above Ruth’s, and he hopped down now, using a couple

of steps on the ladder.

Ruth squeezed Joan harder. “I’m sorry about Nick,” she said softly.

Joan swallowed hard and nodded. She glanced at the bunks again—there were six of them. Two stacks of three. One for each of them, plus Nick. Her chest constricted. Nick should have been here with them. He was supposed to be here.

Ruth’s gaze tracked from Joan to Aaron, and Joan saw her register the Oliver logos. The fact that Joan and Aaron were matching.

“Where did you get those clothes ?”

“We went back to the Oliver house,” Joan admitted.

“Well, that was unwise,” Tom said.

Joan felt defensive of Aaron. She’d been a deadweight. “I don’t even know how he got me out of the colosseum—I wasn’t helping

at all.”

“No, it was unwise,” Aaron said to Joan heavily. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Jamie sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter where we go. We’re all outside Nick’s protection now. If Eleanor wants to

send guards for us, she’ll find us wherever we are. We’re just waiting her out at this point.”

“Who monograms their tracksuits anyway?” Ruth said to Aaron.

Aaron glared at her. “Some of us are proud of our families.” He plucked a box of value-brand tea bags from beside the kettle.

“Tell me this isn’t the only tea in the room.”