Page 59 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

“The Monster Court?” Aaron said slowly. The Court was a mythical and perilous place at the very heart of the monster world—it

sat outside time itself.

Aaron didn’t remember going there, but Joan did. She’d stepped through a gate into a palace surrounded by the endless nothingness

of the void. She’d felt like a rowboat, floating in an ocean of shadows. If she’d taken a single step outside the palace,

she’d have been lost.

The people of the Court had been as dangerous as the place itself, powerful and cruel; people who’d cut your throat for the

pleasure of watching you bleed. Joan had never wanted to go back there.

“The public centerpiece of the jubilee celebration this year was the massacre at the arena,” Mum said. “But the jubilee isn’t

over until the twelfth strike of midnight tonight. I have reason to believe that the gates of the Monster Court will open

on the first strike.”

“ Tonight? ” Joan said. She’d known they’d need to move quickly—the timeline was in a dire state. But tonight was so soon.

“At the end of every jubilee, Eleanor hosts a celebration at the Court itself. She sends invitations to a select few on that very night. They’re told never to speak of it.”

“So we could have multiple chances at her,” Aaron said. “If there’s a celebration every fifty years—”

“No,” Mum interjected. “Every jubilee, the gates open to invited guests. But they always open onto the same celebration. The

same night at the Court.”

Joan folded her arms around herself, feeling cold suddenly. “Who gets an invitation?”

“All of the Curia Monstrorum attend,” Mum said. “The hundred people who control the breadth of the timeline, under Eleanor.”

Joan had only ever encountered two members of the Court: One had been Eleanor herself, before she’d ascended to the throne.

The other had been a man named Conrad. Joan had only seen him from afar, but he’d had so much power that she’d almost been

able to taste it, like snow on the wind.

“There are courtiers too,” Mum said. “People who live permanently at Court. They’re almost as deadly as the Curia Monstrorum themselves. As for ordinary people... only a handful receive invitations every fifty years. And they only receive one

invitation in their lives. No one can attend the celebration twice. I have no idea who’ll be invited tonight—most people are

never invited, not even heads of family. I never have been.”

“I think we can assume we’re all off the guest list this year,” Aaron said dryly. “So how do we get through the gates?”

“I don’t know,” Mum said. “All I know is that it’s impossible to cross into the Court without an invitation or an escort. It’s rumored that a few people have tried to break in, but they all fell into the void.”

Joan shivered at that.

Nick saw the shiver, and his jaw tightened. “What is the void?” he said. “I mean, I’ve seen it, but I don’t understand what it is.”

“It’s the nothingness that surrounds the timeline,” Mum said. “Our minds can’t really comprehend it. When we look into it,

our brains add things: shadows, images. But the truth is, there’s nothing there at all. If you fell into the void, you’d cease

to exist—not just the current version of you, but every version that ever could be again. You’d be lost to the void forever.”

Joan suppressed another shiver. She tried not to think how close they’d come to falling in when they’d escaped the Court last

time. They had done it, though. They’d gotten in and they’d gotten out.

“We’ve broken into the Court before,” she said. “All of us broke in.” It hit her again that she was the only one who remembered

that.

“What?” For all the windows Mum had made into other timelines, she hadn’t known that. She looked appalled now, as if she wanted

to scold Joan for something that hadn’t even happened in this lifetime.

“We gate-crashed a party that time too,” Joan said.

It had been the timeline when Nick had been a monster slayer; they’d gone in trying to undo his massacre of the Hunts and Olivers.

“It wasn’t as exclusive as this one—there were hundreds of people waiting at the gate with us.

We couldn’t forge the invitations, but we acquired other people’s chops.

” The monster form of ID. “We stamped them next to similar ones in the invitation book to look like we’d been invited. ”

“That won’t work this time,” Mum said, frowning thoughtfully. “There won’t be enough guests at the gate to confuse the guards.”

“There was another way in,” Joan remembered now. “Gran gave me a key to the Court.” She glanced at Nick, who tilted his head. Nick had

taken it from Joan; he didn’t remember that either.

“A key?” Mum said. She was really frowning now. “My mother had a key to the Court?”

“Maybe she has it in this timeline too,” Joan said. “It almost looked like a family chop.” She closed her eyes, trying to

recall what it had looked like. I’ve never seen this sigil , Ruth had said. “There were words on it— Not for self, but for King . And the sigil was a chimera of some kind, with knots in the tail.”

Mum tilted her head, as if that description was familiar. “We can’t go to your grandmother for help here, though,” she said,

a little apologetically. “My mother isn’t the woman you know here—she can’t be trusted in this timeline.”

Gran had said as much when they’d spoken to her in the tear, but Joan’s heart sank. “Then we’ll need another way in.”

“I’m afraid so,” Mum said.

“Can we find someone who’s been before? Getting in isn’t the only problem. We need to know about the event itself.”

“ No one knows that,” Mum said.

“What do you mean?”

“No one remembers anything from that party,” Mum said. “Very few people even admit that they’ve attended—they’re not supposed to speak of it. The few who remember anything say that they recall walking through the gates and then leaving again, with nothing in between.”

“Nothing at all?” Joan said. The unease from earlier increased. Assuming they could get in, they’d walk in utterly unprepared.

Eleanor had bested them in almost every confrontation they’d had with her, and the stakes now were so high. Joan put her head

in her hands and felt her mother’s touch briefly on her shoulder.

“I think you should all have a rest,” Mum said. “When did you last sleep?”

Joan had slept a little at the inn, but Aaron hadn’t really, and Nick was fresh out of the arena. But still...

“There is time,” Mum said firmly, anticipating their protests. “Just an hour or so. Your friends are on their way here from the Chimera

Inn. I think you should lie down for a bit—just until they get here. It’s still morning, and—as I said—the gates won’t open

until midnight.”

Mum led them to three guest rooms in the attic before leaving them. The rooms were small, but cozy and private, smelling of

fresh linen and sun-warmed wood. Joan knew she should lie down, but she found herself turning to the view of the river. This

side of the building looked out onto the Tower of London. It was high up enough that Joan felt like she was in the Tower herself.

A soft knock at the door made her turn. Nick was in the hallway. Behind him, Aaron’s door opened.

Aaron saw Nick and began to close his door again, but Joan beckoned them both. She was dreading their unfinished conversation,

but at the same time the tension was becoming unbearable.

“Well... ,” Aaron said, trailing into Joan’s room after Nick. He shut the door behind him. “This is wonderfully awkward,

isn’t it?”

“I think this was my bedroom in the original timeline,” Joan said. “It’s so familiar....” The smell, most of all. There

was a touch of rose water in the air, mixed with fresh laundry and the brine of the river.

“It reminds me of my actual room,” Aaron said. “Just the size of it,” he clarified. “Everything else about it is much more

pleasant.” He sank onto the little bed, and after a moment Joan sat beside him. There was room for Nick on her other side,

but he sat on the floor under the window, his back against the wall, and stretched out his legs along the length of the bed.

“Imagine,” Aaron said to Joan. “If this was your room in the true timeline, the two of you probably spent a lot of time getting it on in here.”

Joan felt herself redden. A flush rose on Nick’s neck too.

“You’re really making it less awkward,” Nick said dryly. He was silent for a beat. “Why do you say it’s the size of your actual

room? We spent the last three weeks in a mansion bigger than all of Yorkshire.”

“Did I say room? I meant the shoe nook in my closet.”

Nick shot him a sharp look, and Aaron shrugged.

“Where do we start?” Joan asked.

“Honestly”—Nick’s eyes dropped to his shoes—“I’d be just as happy if we never talked about it. If we just saved the world

and never talked about it again.”

“And I thought I hated talking about my feelings,” Aaron said.

“I think all three of us have that in common,” Joan said. She picked a bit of lint from the quilt. The fabric was blue with

white stripes, adding to the nautical feeling from the view. “I mean, as a plan, I don’t mind it.... I like the part where

we save the world.”

“Yeah, and I love that we can just exist in an awful fug of misery before that,” Aaron said.

“Is that how you feel?” Nick asked him. He’d been eyeing Aaron since the comment about his room size.

Aaron opened his mouth to say something flippant, but his true feelings flitted across his face, and he closed his mouth again.

Joan’s chest felt heavy. “That’s how I feel,” she admitted. She sensed more than saw their gazes turn to her. She swallowed

around the sudden lump in her throat. “This is my fault,” she said. “I know. I’ve made all of us so unhappy.”

“I don’t think,” Nick said, “that’s an accurate characterization at all.”