Page 56 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

know how many times I watched you walk home from school. Watched you and your dad make dinner. Watched your birthday parties....”

“You came to see me?” Joan said. A familiar pressure of emotion rose, trying to be felt. Ever since she’d learned that Mum

was a time traveler, she’d had questions: Why didn’t you ever try to meet me?

Why didn’t you come and find me after you died?

Now it seemed her mother—one version of her, at least— had come to her.

And maybe Joan would never know why her own mother had never tried to meet her, but this seemed to hint that

she would have if she could.

“It was as close to you as I could get,” Mum said. Her voice cracked. “I was so glad to see you and your dad—alive and free, far away from monster rule.”

Joan closed her eyes, trying to take it all in. “I thought something was wrong with my power.” Deep down, Joan had been wondering

if there was something wrong with her . If she was an abomination, as Edmund Oliver had once called her. She hesitated, and then confessed in a rush, “We saw tears in the sky

here—hundreds of them. I thought I might have made them.”

“Oh, Joan...” Mum reached across the table, and Joan took her hand. “Those holes were here from this world’s conception.

Eleanor stretched the timeline too far from its original form. It couldn’t hold its shape. That’s why she needed to lock the

timeline. To make this its true shape.”

“I haven’t been damaging the timeline?”

Mum squeezed Joan’s hand. “No. If you were trained in your power, you’d be able to open and close windows at will. As it is,

any windows that you’ve made and left open will just shrink and close on their own, in time. They cause no harm to the timeline.”

Joan took a deep breath, a thread of relief seeping in. Jamie’s father had been right—the Grave power was benign.

“If anything,” Mum said, “your untrained power could be causing harm to you . People with a strong, untrained Grave power sometimes have terrible fade-outs.”

Joan looked at Aaron.

Mum saw Joan’s face and squeezed her hand. “There’s something I want to show you. All of you.” She released Joan’s hand gently and made the peeling motion again. And then one more time.

At that final gesture, Joan stared. The house was visible again through the new window, but it had changed. The walls were

cream, and the rugs were the soft green of olive leaves.

“This is the original timeline,” Mum said.

Inside the tear Mum had made, two figures emerged from the staircase. It took Joan a second to recognize herself with Nick.

Their haircuts were different—Joan’s a shoulder-length bob, and Nick’s long enough to curl. They were holding hands, smiling

at each other, excitement and nerves exuding from them, as if something important was about to happen.

Beside Joan now, Nick’s breath hitched. The love between their original selves was undeniable. They were looking at each other

as if there was no one else in the world.

And the thing was, Joan realized, Nick still looked at her like that. He still loved her. And she still loved him. She still turned toward him when he entered a room

like he was the sun itself.

“The happy couple,” Aaron said roughly, and Joan felt again like her heart was being wrenched apart. Because she loved Aaron

too, desperately, helplessly.

Joan jumped at the sound of her own voice. Somehow, she hadn’t expected to hear it.

I know my family’s on board , she was saying to Nick .

All we have to do is persuade everyone else , Nick replied.

Outside the tear, Nick frowned. “What exactly are we watching?”

“This is the day of the peace talks,” Mum said softly. “The last day before the King erased my family from existence.”

“The peace talks... ,” Joan echoed. She stared with new eyes. This was the moment it had all begun. Joan and Nick had sought

peace between humans and monsters, and Eleanor had informed on them to the King.

Later, Eleanor would blame Joan and Nick for the Graves’ erasure. She’d punish them by turning them against each other. They’d

tried to seek peace, so she’d turned Nick into a monster slayer. Someone who’d hurt you—who you’d hurt , she’d told Joan. Until neither of you could bear it anymore. She’d seen it as poetic justice.

Inside the tear, Joan said, We have the Hunts, and the Olivers too.

The word Olivers seemed to echo.

“The Olivers ?” Aaron said, shock in his voice. Joan was surprised too. “The Olivers were part of the peace talks?”

“They were involved even before the Graves,” Mum said. “They were the first family to agree to stop taking time.”

Aaron shook his head. “No.” It was flat, like that wasn’t possible. “My father hates humans. He always has. He’d never agree to that.”

As he spoke, though, a third person entered the room, back visible first, as if they’d come in from the balcony.

Joan was the first to recognize who it was. “It’s you,” she said to Aaron.

Of the three of them, Aaron was most recognizable, his clothes the same sharp cut, his elfin beauty unchanged. Only his hair was different: short and neat, and almost military in style.

A shiver of recognition hit Joan. It’s always about Nick with you, isn’t it? Eleanor had said to her once. And that blond boy.

In the tear, Nick poured water into tall glasses and brought one over to Aaron, who took it with a grateful look.

You’re worried , Nick said to him softly.

Aaron drank the water, hand shaking slightly. My uncle Lucien is still resisting, but they’ll all do as I say. My cousin Geoffrey has been calming nerves. He tried to drink again, but his hand wasn’t behaving.

Joan’s other self came over and put a hand on Aaron’s arm, steadying him. The gesture was casually intimate, and so was Aaron’s

small smile at her.

“You were the head of the Oliver family in the original timeline,” Mum explained to Aaron now. “Joan and Nick came to you first—even before they spoke to the Graves. You brought the powerful Oliver family to the table.”

“I agreed to stop taking human life?” Aaron said. It was quiet, though, as if he were asking himself.

Inside the tear, their original selves sat, Joan at the head of the table, and Aaron and Nick on either side of her. They

made an unexpectedly imposing team.

A few moments later, they were joined by a fourth person. Joan recognized her at once.

Eleanor looked exactly as she had in the stadium. A fairy-tale princess with luminous eyes and ripples of golden hair.

To Joan’s surprise, her original self went straight to Eleanor and threw her arms around her. I didn’t think you’d be here!

I’m begging you not to go through with this , Eleanor said in return.

Joan’s original self pulled back. I know you don’t agree, but we took a vote—the whole family.

I don’t care about the vote! You’re talking about ending time travel, forever! Ending our birthright! Eleanor’s voice was hoarse with emotion. It’s not like we’re killing people—we’re just taking a few days here and there.

A few days of life . Of human life . Imagine it was my life being taken.

Obviously, I’d never take life from you, Eleanor said. God, Joan. It was her turn to hug Joan, anger and love warring on her face.

Outside the tear, Joan was surprised anew. The emotions in the scene were raw, but it was clear to her that Eleanor had loved

Joan once upon a time. And her other self had loved Eleanor back—fiercely. They really had been sisters.

As the thought occurred, Joan almost felt it—just for a moment. A sharp tug in her chest. An echo of love for a sister she

didn’t remember.

Mum’s expression now was heavy. She leaned up and closed the tear—as easily as zipping up a tent. When she was done, there

was no evidence of it.

Joan stared at the space where they’d all been, her heart beating too fast. She’d taken a few steps toward the tear, she realized

now. As if she could have walked in there and stopped what was coming.

Maybe she couldn’t have, though. She had a feeling that Eleanor would have stuck to her beliefs—love or not. Maybe everything that had unfolded had been inevitable.

And it struck Joan now, with sick dismay, that Aaron had also been part of Eleanor’s revenge. Eleanor had pitted him against

Joan and Nick, just like she’d pitted them against each other. Maybe she’d done more than that.... Aaron had been the head

of the Oliver family in the original timeline, and not his father. His downfall in the subsequent timelines had to have been

Eleanor’s doing too.

Joan closed her eyes. She felt utterly shaken by everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. She’d lost Nick;

she’d realized she loved Aaron; she’d slept with him; and Nick had returned to her, alive. And now she’d found Mum, and learned

that her own power wasn’t the abomination she’d imagined. She’d seen herself and Nick and Aaron in the original timeline.

Together , impossibly intertwined.

It was too much. She felt overwhelmed. “What are we going to do?” she heard herself say.

Mum took a step toward her, put her arms around her. “You don’t have to do anything, my love. There’s nothing to be done.

You just need to stay alive.”

Joan felt exhausted. She and Aaron had barely slept, and Nick... God, Nick had been in that stasis. He’d essentially just

come out of the arena, still banged up and bruised.

But Mum’s words made her realize that they couldn’t just rest. Joan pulled back. “We need to talk about how to fix the timeline.

We need another way to get to Eleanor.” The stadium gambit hadn’t worked.

“Joan...” Mum’s expression flared with something between sorrow and sympathy, and Joan felt a sick swoop of doubt. “I was in the stands,” Mum said. “I felt the damage to the timeline being sealed away. Eleanor locked the timeline. There’s no way to change it now.”

“But Eleanor said she was wiping away all memory of the previous timelines. If she succeeded, then how did you just show us

a vision of the true timeline?” Joan asked.