Page 66 of Once a Villain
Joan swallowed. Aaron had 150 years’ worth of tokens. She didn’t want to use them, but they had to be realistic. They needed time and space to plan and think.
But Jamie shook his head before Aaron could respond. “Traveling back won’t buy us more time. When Eleanor locks the timeline, she’ll lock it all at once. Wherever we are,wheneverwe are, the timeline will freeze into place. Just like when she createdthistimeline.”
Joan remembered—the new timeline had swallowed the old in an instant, head to tail. She took a breath, and tried to think like Gran would have—andGod, she wished so badly Gran were here. “All right. So... we’re pretty sure Eleanor will be at theJubilee Games in two weeks’ time. And we think she’ll beatthe colosseum.”
She didn’t hear the nervous shake in her voice until Nick put a warm hand on her arm. His touch was solid as always, and calming. “Tom... ,” she said. “I assume you’ve been to the colosseum before—that you know it?”
“Never had the stomach for blood sports,” Tom said. “All those humans and animals...”
“I’vebeen to the Londinium colosseum,” Aaron interjected. His eyes flicked to Nick’s hand on Joan’s arm and then away. “I once traveled back to see it at its height.”
“That’s a four-thousand-year round trip... ,” Nick said slowly.
“Something like that.” There was a needle in Aaron’s voice. “It was quite filthy really. Londinium was a backwater—at the very outskirts of the Roman Empire. I couldn’t wait to get home.”
“Is there a point to this sweet reminiscence?” Nick ground out.
Aaron’s expression barely changed, but Joan registered his glint of satisfaction. He’d wanted to get a rise out of Nick. For all his frosty exterior, he seemed more heated than usual underneath right now.
Tom shifted his weight. “Let’s stick to relevancies. In essence, we need to physically get to her.”
“And then we need to stop her from locking the timeline,” Ruth said, “so we can seize control of it ourselves.”
“And restore it to something better,” Nick said.
Joan took a deep breath. That would mean killing Eleanor.When Eleanor had seized control of the timeline, she’d had to kill the King. Joan remembered now how blood had pooled under his body; how the timeline curled away from him after his death, twining itself around Eleanor.
But Tom’s interjection—we need to physically get to her—had made her think of something else too. Tom hadn’t actually declared a side yet.
“Does this mean you’re going to work with us?” she asked Tom. “Have you decided?”
Tom hesitated a moment longer than Joan would have liked. “I suppose I’m leaning toward it.”
“He’ll help.” Jamie sounded tired. Tom blinked at him. “Oh, come on, you will,” Jamie said. “You know that this will be our one and only chance to stop her. If she locks the timeline, it’ll be all over. You’ll never get another opportunity because the timeline will be locked, with her as Queen. With this world as a horror.”
“You say that like we share the same cause,” Tom said to him. “I don’t have causes.”
“Of course you do. You’ve been helping Marguerite—who youknowhas been working against the Court.”
“She pays well,” Tom said. But he frowned, gaze introspective, as if he’d never really delved into his own reasoning for working against the Court.
“Tom... you’re not one to join teams,” Jamie said. “You’d rather keep to yourself. But you haven’t been.”
Tom’s frown deepened. “No Hathaway has love for the Court,” he said. “And... I suppose I sometimes feel like...” Hetrailed off as if he didn’t know what he felt. Then he shook his head. “It’s as you say: the Hathaways prefer to be alone.”
“And yet, you feel like there’s an absence in your life,” Joan said. Tom’s eyes snapped to hers. Joan bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to say that—it had just come out. She knew how it felt, though. When she’d met Nick, it was like she’d been missing him her whole life. “You lost Jamie once before. You’d lost him when I first met you—and you went to the ends of the earth to get him back. You’d have doneanything. You helped me break into the Monster Court itself. And... Ithink you feel something’s missing from your life now. I think some part of you has been looking for him here too.”
Doubt and belief warred in Tom’s expression as if Joan’s words had struck a chord. Joan understood that too. It was so strange to unconsciously remember something. To feel memories in the body rather than in the mind. To know things that you shouldn’t have known.
Aaron said slowly now, “You said before that the Hathaways have no allies. But in our world, you had the Liu family. Yours were the closest of all the allied families. You had houses together on the waterways. The Hathaways were never alone.”
Tom swallowed visibly, eyes flicking to Jamie. There was still doubt there, but he asked Jamie now, “What was your house motto again? You said it before....”
“Bù ji kui bù, wú yi zhì qian li; bù ji xiao liú, wú yi chéng jiang hai.
It means that without taking small steps, you cannot journey a thousand miles. And without gathering small streams, you cannot form—”
“—oceans and seas,” Tom said, and Jamie drew a sharp breath.
