Page 132 of Once a Villain
“You can do this,” Nick said steadily. Joan could feel him and Aaron behind her, like a solid wall.
Eleanor’s pain-dulled eyes turned to Nick, a shark sensing movement. “How are you even alive?” she managed. “You should be dead. I thought youweredead.” Her gaze dropped to his ring then, and her mouth twisted.
Joan felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She’d suspected for some time that Nick’s survival had been linked to the ring.
“Where did you get that?” Eleanor read the answer on Nick’s face. “Youdidn’t—your counterpart did.” She sounded irritated. “I suppose he found some way to speak to the slayer himself, through a tear in the timeline. Well, isn’tthata team-up?”
“What?” Joan couldn’t imagine it. But she found herself remembering how Nick—the monster slayer version of him—had returned to her at the very end. He’d seemed so changed since the last time she’d seen him. Could he have had a conversation with his counterpart in the interim? Had they somehow managed to transfer the ring between them—through a tear in the timeline, as Mum had suggested? Joan shook her head at herself. She supposed she’d never know. “Are you saying that ring saved his life?”
Eleanor shifted and then winced as the blade pulled at her shoulder, frustrated and pained. “Obviously.” At their confused expressions, she looked even more irritated. “When he fell, his thoughts were focused on his imminent landing—just as if he were jumping in time. That triggered his travel token. But then he didn’t steer the jump. He just cried out,No.” She said it mockingly, and Joan ground her teeth. “If he were a monster, with an ordinary travel token, he’d have hit the ground and died. But he had a human token with an affinity for him. It tried to obey him. He asked it to take him nowhere, and it did. It sent himnowhere. It froze him in time. To everyone in that arena—myself included—he appeared to be dead, but in truth, the ring had put him in an unchangeable state. Not even those metal spikes could impale him.”
Nick looked shaken as he took that in, and Joan saw again in her mind’s eye Nick falling from the stands. He’d been stiff and unmoving even as he’d fallen, she realized. The ring had already frozen him.
Then he’d seemed dead in every way—not moving, not breathing—until Joan had lifted the ring from his neck, and air had inflated his lungs.
Joan had thought hewasdead. She’d been so relieved when he’d drawn that breath. More relieved than she’d ever been in her life. And it had been sheer luck that he’d even worn the ring in the arena. It had been sheer luck that... Her hands were suddenly shaking as she worked on unmaking the shield.
Eleanor noticed, pouncing on the weakness. “Look at you,” she said to Joan. “Struggling with the Grave power like a child.Who would have thought you could be so diminished?”
Joan looked up at her. Even after everything Eleanor had done to them, this act of dismantling her shield, of preparing to kill her, was making Joan feel sick. “It doesn’t have to be like this!” she said, frustrated. “Just fix the timeline yourself—we shouldn’t have to force you!”
“Ididfix it!” Eleanor snapped. “I brought our family back! I fixedyourmistakes!”
Joan swallowed around the sudden lump in her throat. Eleanor blamed her for the erasure of their family, she knew.
“Remind me,” Aaron said to Eleanor, sounding ice cold. “Whydid you need to bring your family back to life?”
“The King erased them because of her! Because of the three ofyou,” Eleanor said.
“Because ofyou,” Aaron said. Anger flared in Eleanor’s eyes. “Oh, you don’t like hearing that?” Aaron said. “Did you forget that youinformed on your own family to the King?”
“It’s a monster’s birthright to travel!” Eleanor said. “You were all trying to take that away!”
“And so you made this beautiful world where monsters could travel with impunity... ,” Nick said, jaw tight.
“I made a world where my family would always be safe,” Eleanor snapped. She raised her good hand; she must have regained some strength, because this time she managed a true blast. Standing directly in front of her, Joan was hit full in the chest. The impact was bruising, and she stumbled back. She would have fallen, but strong arms caught her before she could.Nick.For a long, terrible beat, she couldn’t draw a breath.
“All right?” he said worriedly.
Joan’s lungs started working again, and she painfully sucked in air. “Yeah,” she reassured him.
Inside the shield, Eleanor was panting again, eyes closed, as if she’d hurt herself as much as Joan with that blast. Her already pale face was sickly white now, with a sheen of sweat. How much blood had she lost? Her dress was soaked with it.
“How do you think this is going to end?” Joan asked her. “This world can’t hold itself together. You made itwrong.”
“It’ll end when I kill him.” Eleanor nodded weakly at Nick. “I’m going to rip that ring off you and kill you,” she snarled at him. “That’llfix those tears!”
Fear thudded through Joan. “If you dare touch him—” she blurted.
“You’re going to do that pinned to the wall?” Aaron said at the same time. Joan felt a little sick every time she looked at the blood dripping down, but she had a feeling that some part of Aaron was relishing the sight. “This ends when we killyou,” Aaron said to Eleanor. He looked at Joan. “Youhaveto break through that shield.”
Joan nodded. Her hands shook even more as she concentrated on unmaking the barrier. How did Eleanor evenhavea shield, she wondered suddenly. Mariam was still knocked out cold. “I thought you needed an Ali to maintain this thing,” she said.
“That was before I took the power of the timeline!” Eleanor said. “You have no idea what I can do now.”
She raised her hand and power rolled toward Joan again,distorting the air like a summer haze. Joan flinched, throwing up her own hand instinctively, bracing herself for another bruising impact.
But to Joan’s shock, the blast melted at her touch. She stared.
