Page 75 of Once a Villain (Only a Monster #3)

Joan shielded her eyes. She lay on a sun-warmed picnic blanket, her head in Aaron’s lap and Nick propped up against her crooked

knees. It had been a year since they’d arrived back home, and Aaron had suggested they do something on the anniversary. To celebrate , he’d said. To remember.

“Aren’t you worried about grass stains?” Joan asked Aaron now. He was in a heather-gray suit—some things never changed—with

his back against a tree.

Aaron seemed amused by the question. He bent to kiss her forehead. “No.”

Nick made a soft sound of contentment. “Are we actually going to eat this picnic?”

“I mean... ,” Aaron murmured, a smile warming his voice. He looked at Nick, who gave him a thoughtful look back.

Joan’s face was already pink from the sun, but she could feel herself reddening more. “We’re outside,” she said, laughing.

Aaron looked down at her, his expression so soft that Joan’s breath caught. He’d never looked at her like that in any other

timeline. He ran his thumb along the flush at her cheekbone. He liked making her blush, Joan had learned. “On my estate,” he pointed out. “My very large, very private estate.”

“We invited people to lunch,” Joan reminded him.

“Whose idea was that?”

“Yours.”

“Terrible idea. Awful.” Aaron kissed her with each statement. “I’ll have to make it up to you later.”

“I think I hear the boat,” Nick said, a smile in his voice now too.

Joan tilted her head and heard it too—the insect buzz of an engine on the river.

It was Ruth who arrived first, though, with a huge basket. “I brought so much food.” She flopped onto the blanket with a groan. “Everyone has to eat it; that basket was heavy .”

“We will,” Joan promised. She started unpacking it—six different kinds of sandwiches and little savory tarts. Scones, jam,

cream, cherries, strawberries, raspberries. “How did you carry all this?”

On the river, Jamie and Tom’s narrowboat was drawing into the Olivers’ private dock. Frankie and Sylvie jumped off first and

came over to investigate the food.

Ruth retrieved a container of cold chicken from the basket and stripped pieces off the bone for each of the animals. “You’re

late!” she called to the boat.

“Sorry,” Jamie said cheerfully, tying the rope to the dock. “It’s a lot harder to be on time when you can’t time-travel to

the exact moment.”

A year , Joan thought. A year since anyone had been able to time-travel.

“There are things I miss,” Aaron said, pushing his pale hair from his forehead.

“Being able to choose the weather?” Ruth suggested.

“Garum and silphium,” Tom said.

“Always having access to perfectly ripe fruit,” Jamie said.

“The 2380s,” Tom said. “Those are going to be some good years.”

“You’re saying too many things,” Nick grumbled, and Aaron looked over at him, expression softening, like it only ever did

with Joan and Nick.

“The cost was too high,” Aaron murmured to him.

“Far too high,” Joan agreed.

They all missed being able to travel, though, she knew. Aaron dreamed, sometimes, that he was in Londinium. That he was in

the Victorian era. In the future. Sometimes, he woke with yearning in his eyes.

I’d rather be here , he said sometimes afterward. I might miss it, but I’d far rather be here with you.

Joan dreamed too. She dreamed of Holland House before it had burned. Of St. James’s Park in the 1990s. Of Limehouse in the

1800s. But most of all, she missed the ripple and shift of the timeline itself. She hadn’t known how comforting it had been

until it was gone.

“We gained more than we lost,” Aaron said now, seriously.

That was true. This was a brand-new timeline; not the original, and not any that they’d lived in before.

And it was good . Joan’s mother was alive here, and so was Aaron’s.

Joan’s dad was here. Nick’s family. The Lius.

The Hunts. The Graves... Even the time that Joan and Nick had taken from themselves to travel seemed to have been returned.

The families still had their individual powers, and Aaron’s mother had used hers to check; she’d looked them over carefully, and promised that they both had a whole lifetime of years left.

And there was this precious, wonderful thing between Joan and Aaron and Nick. Joan had never imagined they could be happy

like this.

Eleanor, though, was truly gone. Maybe she’d been swallowed by the void. Or maybe the timeline had erased her completely.

Not even their own mother remembered her now. Not even Gran. Only Joan, and the people here today....

“Shall we?” Joan asked the others now.

She’d brought a little wax-paper boat with a candle that Nick lit now with a match. Joan put the boat on the river, and they

watched it float slowly downstream, the spark of light already spluttering out.

It was strange, perhaps, to want to remember someone who’d done so much harm to her and to the people she loved. But Eleanor

had been Joan’s sister once upon a time.

Later in the afternoon—so late that the sun had begun to dip—they all dozed in comfortable silence. Sylvie had warmed to Frankie

over the months, and she lay now with her head on Frankie’s back, purring.

“That better not be the last strawberry,” Tom murmured as Joan reached for the almost-empty punnet.

“Too slow,” Joan said.

“You know... you still owe the Lius two favors,” Jamie said to her lazily.

“I brought your whole family back to life!” Joan complained. But she passed the strawberry to Jamie, who passed it to Tom, who popped it into his mouth with a smug look at Joan.

“There’s more in the basket,” Ruth said, eyes blissfully closed against the heat of the sun.

As Joan reached for the wicker basket, a gust of air rippled from across the river. It had been warm all week, and the breeze

was a pleasant change. She searched for the strawberries for a few moments before it occurred to her that the grass around

the basket was still—not a blade was moving in the wind.

It wasn’t a physical sensation, she realized slowly. It was the timeline itself. The first time she’d sensed it in a year.

She turned to the others. None of them seemed to have felt it, but Aaron saw Joan’s reaction. His head tilted in question,

and that made Nick turn to them both.

Joan held her breath, feeling the force of the timeline ripple across the river.

For the first time since they’d arrived in this new timeline, she found herself wondering if one day they might all be able

to travel again—maybe this time without the heavy cost.

And then her mind drifted further. She imagined a day when even Eleanor might get another chance. Might have the opportunity

to be redeemed. Would that ever be possible?

Another breath of wind came then—along with a feeling as clear as words—as if the timeline was answering her question.

Maybe someday.