Page 78 of Once a Villain
Joan put a hand over her mouth. Moments ago, the humans had been fighting the bars of the cage, but now they huddled back against each other, terrified. She winced, eyes squeezing shut as the first lion leaped.
Nick’s voice cut through. “Joan.” It was soft—just for her.
She looked up at his dark eyes and realized that he’d positioned himself to block the window. All she could see now was him.
“We can’t help them in this timeline,” he said. “But we can make it so this never happened. We just have to get to Eleanor.”
He was right, she knew. Shehadto get through this wall.
She tried to focus on the task, but for the next few minutes, she heard sounds that would never leave her. Desperate, pounding footsteps of people running for their lives. Shrieks of fear and anguish that didn’t sound human. Animals growling and grunting. The gruesome wet crunching of teeth tearing through flesh and bone, and agonized screams cutting off into horrifying silence. Coppery blood pierced the heavy incense until it was all Joan could smell.
And maybe the worst of it was the baying of the crowd: theircheers and groans, as if they were watching a football match.
And then somehow the deafening roar rose even further, to thunder—people were cheering in delight. “Semper Regina! Semper Regina!”
Eleanor was here.
Joan had to see her. She scrambled from the widening hole she’d been creating just in time to see Eleanor striding to her seat in the imperial box. In profile she was a queen from a fairy tale—swan-necked, in a heavy crown, her golden hair rippling down her shoulders.
Joan peered, trying to make out if her hair was moving in the breeze. Was she really here, or was this a recording, as Cassius and Finn had believed?
Eleanor stepped to the edge of the imperial box. She was elevated about ten feet above the grounds of the arena. Close enough that a lion could have scaled the wall to her. The colosseum of Rome had had high nets to protect emperors from the wild animals and stray spears. No such net protected Eleanor. Did that mean thiswasjust a projection?
No... There was a slight soap-bubble sheen right in front of the box. A near-invisible protective barrier between Eleanor and the arena. “I see an Ali shield,” she whispered. Ruth drew a sharp breath beside her. “Sheishere.”
Nick looked at Jamie, whose eyes had gone very wide. “You wereright.”
“Welcome!” Eleanor said now, her voice crisp, almost intimate, over the loudspeaker. “Every fifty years, I appear before you—my beloved subjects—to celebrate the anniversary of myreign. Every fifty years, I gift you with a spectacle beyond all those previous. And this year, the spectacle will be the greatest yet.”
Her golden head turned toward the Oliver stands, and Joan shivered, suddenly sure that Eleanor had just sought out and noted Aaron’s presence. He was still in the same seat, above the Oliver banner, his posture upright and stiff.
And then Eleanor turned the other way, and Joan’s breath caught. For a second, she seemed to be looking directly at Joan. “Those who fight and die today honor us all!” she said.
Eleanor couldn’t see inside the chamber, Joan told herself. It was too dark in here, surely. Still, she hurried back to work, unnerved by the illusion of Eleanor’s gaze.
She was almost done with this wall in any case—the hole was nearly three feet deep already. It wouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes to get through.
She crawled back into the cave-like space of it, sliding uncomfortably on the sticky clay, and splayed her hands against the brick.
Her fingers sank in. She kept pushing through, trying to reach the other side—to reach clear air. But instead, her hands juststopped. She’d hit something unyielding. Something that didn’t melt or crumble.
Something her power didn’t work on.
“What’s wrong?” Nick said.
“I—I don’t know,” Joan said. But her heart was already pounding. She grabbed the trowel from Tom and scraped away a thin layer of clay. She reached into the hole and gasped as herfingers stopped, just before the wall. “No,” she breathed. “No, no, no.”
“What is it?” Ruth said.
“There’s a barrier here.” An invisible one with no temperature or texture—it felt more like magnetic resistance than an object. Joan squeezed her eyes shut, frustration and desperation rising in her throat.
If she couldn’t get through to Eleanor...
Nick reached in, hand beside Joan’s, and hit the same obstruction. He looked at Joan, eyes huge and alarmed.
“I think it’s Eleanor’s Ali shield,” Joan said hoarsely. She’d thought that the shield only enclosed Eleanor herself, but now Joan pictured it surrounding the imperial box completely. “What are we going todo? We have to stop her!”
“I can break it,” Ruth said. She’d broken through Ali seals before.
