Page 2 of Once a Villain
She’d been around monsters before, of course—she was half-monster herself. Aaron, Ruth, and Jamie were monsters. But...as soon as she’d woken in this new world, some animal part of her had sensed a change; had almost been able to smell musk on the wind, beneath the smoke and river brine of the city. Her body had known instinctively and immediately that she was no longer at the top of the food chain.
On the other side of the path, Nick’s posture was deceptively casual. He felt it too, though. When a man in a judge-like wig pushed past, Nick’s eyes darted to his hands, tracking him until he was out of reach.
Joan succumbed to the prickle at the back of her neck and glanced over her shoulder. The black-cloaked guard was getting closer. She increased her pace, catching Ruth’s gaze as she did. Ruth nodded, whispering to Nick and Jamie.
They were almost at the bridge now. Ahead, a steep stone staircase led up to its southern limit, marked by a massive building—a castle in its own right—that seemed to cast a shadow over the entire city.
“The Stone Gate,” Aaron said.
Spikes protruded from the gate’s crowning turrets: dark balls on spindly sticks, swaying in the wind. “What are those things?” Joan wondered aloud. Weather vanes? But there were so many of them....
Aaron drew a sharp breath. “Your sister is a piece of work.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it. Don’t look at them.”
“They’re like rotting vegetables,” Joan said. “Like—” She stopped. The breeze had carried a faint scent of decay.
Mr. Larch, her history teacher, had once talked about OldLondon Bridge:They displayedtraitors’heads on spikes—dipped in tar to slow the rot.
“Joan,” Aaron said softly. “You can’t stare—not in a place like this. You’ll invite questions. People will think you know someone on the turrets.”
Joan dragged her gaze back to him, feeling sick and horribly naive. She hadn’t even realized that there were peopleup there, let alone that she was endangering herself and the others by staring at them.
Aaron’s gray eyes were the shade of the storm clouds above. He’d seen sights like this before, she realized—in the Middle Ages, maybe, or the Renaissance,periods when traitors’ heads on a bridge were no more notable than boats on the Thames.
Joan had never been so aware of her own sheltered upbringing. She’d been born and raised in the safety of twenty-first-century Milton Keynes and London. She’d never seen a man hanged, or a body displayed in warning. She’d never imagined that London could be transformed intothis, its ancient cruelties brought back.
And... She glanced again at the north bank, at the open display of monster sigils. In a world where monsters ruled over humans, what new cruelties had emerged?
“Let’s get to the bridge,” she said. The sooner they were on the north bank, in Liu territory, the sooner they’d be safe. And then they could figure out how to fix all this.
“What in the medievalhell??” Ruth said as they all hurried up the stone stairs to the bridge. “This whole city has bad vibes.”
Her voice was half-drowned by the roar of water. The staircase had placed them by the bridge’s wooden supports, huge pillars that churned the river into rapids. Eleanor had once described this noise as a hundred waterfalls. To Joan, though, it sounded more like the ocean: water smashing against rocks and cliffs.
Above them, on the bridge, a gold-and-peacock-colored banner welcomed travelers:eleanor, semper regina! celebrate her jubilee!
“Semper Regina?” Nick said dryly. “How do you have a jubilee if you’realwaysqueen?”
“I heard someone talking about her on the walkway,” Ruth said. “She makes her subjects celebrate her rule every fifty years. Huge celebrations.” To Joan, she said: “No offense, but your sister’s a total narcissist.”
Eleanor’s not my sister, Joan wanted to say. Because no sister of Joan’s would have tortured and murdered people she loved. No sister of hers would have created a timeline where humans suffered under monster rule.
“Can we opine more discreetly about the queen of this godforsaken place?” Aaron hissed. “Last thing I want is to be a head on a turret!”
“Doubt anyone can hear us over this din,” Jamie said. “Plus, we’re the only ones on the staircase.”
Joan looked down. The walkway below was full of people, but Jamie was right. No one had followed them up. They could talk openly for a moment. “We should have a strategy in case we get caught,” she said quickly. “If we get captured—”
“We’re not going to be captured,” Aaron said.
“But if we do, we’re the only people in this world who know that Eleanor changed the timeline. The Lius will know that there was something better before this, but they’ll only have fragments. We have to make sure at least one of us makes it to safety.”
“We’ll make it across,” Aaron insisted.
Did he believe that—or did he just want to? “Aaron, if the guards see us—”
