Page 35 of Once a Villain
“Do you even watch movies?” Nick asked Aaron skeptically.
“I occasionally enjoy a screwball comedy.”
Jamie stepped into the center of the clearing, assessing angles. Then he carefully placed the bit of plastic down. “All right, let’s see what we have.” He backed up until he was sitting beside Ruth.
“I mean, maybe there’s nothing on it,” Joan said. “Maybe it’s not even a recording. Maybe it’s just an empty—”
But as she spoke, the air shimmered like a summer haze. And then the space in front of them transformed. The beautiful gilded wallpaper of the bedroom morphed into a rough stone wall. The floor was stone now too, glistening, as if it had just been mopped.
“Make sure he’s contained!” The voice came out of nowhere, making them all jump. And Joan’s breath caught. She knew that voice; she’d have known it anywhere.
Aaron.
Footsteps sounded—the soft pad of expensive shoes—and then there were suddenly two Aarons here: one sitting beside Joan, hugging his knees; the other standing in a stone room, arms folded and face commanding.
“Good God,” Aaron breathed beside Joan now.
“Oh, that isuncanny,” Ruth said, her voice hushed as if she were afraid that Aaron’s counterpart might hear. He couldn’t—this was just a recording—but Joan felt the same urge to be quiet and still.
Joan had once glimpsed the true-timeline version of herself, and had barely recognized her own face. It hadn’t been like looking in a mirror; more like seeing a twin raised in a very different household.
Aaron’s counterpart lookedjustlike Aaron, from his delicate features to his golden hair, but he held himself differently. This was someone who was used to issuing commands, someone who expected to be obeyed. Joan had never been intimidated by her Aaron, but his counterpart had the air of someone who might order people to their knees.
Even his taste in clothes was different. Joan’s Aaron liked understated quality: crisp shirts and beautifully cut suits. This counterpart dressed to be seen. He wore the long velvet jacket that Joan had seen in the dressing room—dark as dried blood, cut in a deep V. On his fingers, a dozen silver rings glinted in the lamplight. He turned now to face someone off-screen. “Bring him in.”
The words were quiet, but instantly obeyed. Four guards came into view, lugging a limp body between them. They tossed a prisoner onto the floor, where he landed with a heavy thud. The guards backed up quickly, drawing stun guns and batons and training them on the guy as if he were a lion, temporarily sedated.
Aaron’s counterpart didn’t seem afraid. With a mirror-polished black shoe, he pressed his toe to the prisoner’s chin, lifting it until the guy groaned and flinched away.
AndJoan was expecting it, but she still heard herself make a sound of denial at the back of her throat.
It was Nick. ButnotNick.
Where Aaron’s counterpart was identical, Nick’s was barely recognizable. His hair was long and unwashed, his nose broken, and both eyes blackened. White whip-mark scars and bruisesmarred his bare chest, the tender skin over his kidneys.
Joan’s heart clenched at the story of his body. The scars wereold—stretched and pale. This was Nick as she’d never seen him; never wanted to see him. A Nick who’d grown up in a world where humans were disposable and abused.
Hewasstill Nick, though—as injured as he was, his captors were afraid of him. They’d shackled him, binding his arms and tying his ankles together.
Joan looked over atherNick, sitting just beyond Aaron, needing—as she had when she’d seen the poster—the reassurance that he was here and unhurt. Nick looked back at her now, as if he needed to see her too.
“Get him up on his knees,” Aaron’s counterpart said.
Guards stepped forward and maneuvered Nick’s counterpart until he was kneeling. They were tense as they did it, as if anticipating an attack.
But Nick’s counterpart just knelt where they put him, listing to one side, his breath harsh.
“Sounds like broken ribs,” Jamie murmured, and Joan’s stomach turned over at his tone. He’d been tortured himself, by Eleanor, in another lifetime.
“I’ve already told you everything I know,” Nick’s counterpart slurred now. His voice was completely flat, all the fight knocked out of him. Joan had never even known he could sound like that. “You’ve had three Griffiths at me. There’s nothing left hidden in my head.”
“I want to believe you,” Aaron’s counterpart said almost gently. “But I like to be thorough. So we’re going one moreround. No Griffiths this time. Just you and me.”
Nick’s counterpart closed his eyes, and Joan’s heart fell at his lost expression. She knelt up, her instinct to crawl into that recording. She wanted to reach for him and pull him to safety. But she couldn’t. This had already happened. He wasn’t here.
“How can you do this?” Nick’s counterpart managed between pained breaths. “How can you treat people like this?”
“Humans aren’t people,” Aaron’s counterpart said, with such genuine belief that Joan couldn’t suppress a shudder. Beside her, she feltherAaron tense. “My birthright is to take human life and travel,” Aaron’s counterpart continued, “just as your birthright as a human is to die. Now...” He put his hands behind his back in the lord-like posture Joan knew so well. “I know that the wolves have been planning an attack on the Queen herself.”
