Page 65 of Once a Villain
Joan nodded. She’d known most of that already.
“When I was the Archive,” Jamie continued, “the King was searching for a way to tighten the leash. To take complete control of the timeline. He wanted to cage it so tightly that it could form no shape but the one he’d made for it.”
Joan had often perceived the timeline as an unwillingly leashed creature, with a mind of its own. She thought of the men imprisoned on the bridge, forced to curl over in too-small cages, and she shivered. “He found a way?”
“Yes, but...” Jamie swallowed visibly. “He was never quite ruthless enough to go through with it.”
“Not ruthless enough?” Nick said. Between their seats, his hand curled into a fist. Joan covered it with hers and felt him draw a slow breath. “What was the method?”
“In order to leash the timeline,” Jamie said, “to cage it so tightly that it couldn’t move, the King would have had to weaken it first. To push it to the very brink of collapse. Only then could he have fixed the cage around it.”
The hairs rose at the back of Joan’s neck as she thought of the tears in the sky, the void inside them, threatening to consume the word. “You think Eleanor has been weakening the timeline onpurpose?”
“When I saw those tears, I thought they were a byproduct of Eleanor pushing the timeline too far from true. But now I think she wants to do what the King never dared to. I think shewantsto force the timeline to the very edge of failure, to the point where the void itself is on the cusp of consuming it. She wants to break the timeline’s will. And when she has it on its knees, she’ll take complete control of it.”
“But... this timeline is so damaged. It seems like she’s destroying it.”
Jamie shook his head. “Once caged, the timeline will stop fighting to return to its original shape. At that point, it should be able to redirect its energy toward healing itself. The tears will be fixed, and the timeline will be fixed too. Fixed in place forever in the shape—the cage—Eleanor makes for it.”
Aaron looked pale. “So where does that leave us? Why hasn’t she already done it? It sounds like she could act at any moment.”
“Just before I brought you all here,” Jamie said, “I told Tom what I remembered of the King’s plans. I told him that there had to be a reason why Eleanor hadn’t already locked the timeline. It was clear to me that it wasn’t quite weak enough for her to take control yet. And... shecouldwait until the tears get worse on their own. But I remember her well enough to know she’ll want more control than that. She’d rather do something to push it over the edge. And...” He flicked Tom a look, and Tom twisted his mouth unhappily in response. “Tom figured it out.”
Ruth looked at Tom. “You broke the cipher?”
Tom’s giant body didn’t quite fit in the library chair; the wooden arms were a too-tight squeeze. He’d ended up perchingon the end of the seat, forearms resting on the desk for balance. “Not the cipher,” he said. “But I think I understand Eleanor’s plan to lock the timeline. And where she’ll be.”
Joan sat up straighter. “Where?”
“There’s always a great spectacle on the day of the jubilee,” Tom said. “The Jubilee Games, they call it. But this year, they’re planning an unprecedented showcase. The biggest and bloodiest spectacle ever displayed at the Londinium colosseum—human captives versus gladiators. Animals versus humans—you get the picture.”
“Blood sports,” Nick said flatly. “Executions.”
“Yes,” Tom said.
Joan folded her arms around herself. Nick’s counterpart had fought in the arena as a gladiator. She could hardly bear to think of it—a crowd cheering and jeering as he was forced to fight for his life. To kill.
“What does that have to do with Eleanor’s plan?” Ruth said.
“Don’t you see?” Jamie said. “Hundreds—maybethousands—of humans are going to die who wouldn’t have died in the previous timeline. All in one day, in one place. Those deaths will distort the timeline so far from its true shape that it’ll reach breaking point. The timeline will be weak enough, finally, for Eleanor to take full control.”
Joan shivered at the thought. Jamie had said that the King had never been ruthless enough to go through with fully caging the timeline. Eleanorwasthat ruthless, though.
“We were told that Eleanor never makes public appearances,” Ruth said. “That she never appears anywhere in person.”
“She’ll be there at the colosseum.” Jamie sounded certain. “She’ll have to be. She can’t lock the timeline from the Monster Court—she’ll need to be out in the world, as close as she can be to the epicenter, when the timeline weakens. She’ll be right there, watching and waiting.”
“Whenisthe jubilee?” Ruth asked.
“In two weeks’ time,” Tom said.
“Twoweeks?” Joan tried and failed to suppress a wave of fear.You’re running out of time, Gran had said, but Joan had expected to have so much longer to prepare.
Eleanor herself was a long-game thinker. She’d put years into planning her revenge on Joan and Nick, and on the King. She must have made plans and backup plans here.
“We have to slow this down,” Joan said. “We need more time to make proper plans.”
“Well... ,” Ruth said. “Aaron still has those travel tokens.”
