Page 89 of Once a Villain
“I know,” Joan said. “You’re not the guy your counterpart was pretending to be. Your counterpart wasn’t either.”
Joan could see the edge of his face. She’d seen that expression before, when she’d defended him in front of other people. It was closer to confusion than anything—like he had no reference for it. His arms tightened around her, and he lifted her chin to kiss her. His eyes were as honest suddenly as she’d ever seen them. “This thing between us,” he whispered. “Between you and me. I’ve never felt like this before. I didn’t know I could feel like this.”
Later, Joan was curled up in Aaron’s bed again. He’d gone down to the kitchen to fetch some food. As she shifted, one of the pillows fell to the floor. She pushed aside the canopy curtain to grab it, and something caught her eye. A book.The Riverside Chaucer.It had been pushed between the mattress and the canopy’s frame.
Joan reached for it curiously. At her touch, the room seemed to ripple around her. The timeline had stirred—for the first time since Eleanor had locked it. The feeling reminded Joan of whenshe’d touched Nick’s signet ring. As if the timeline was interested in what Joan was doing.
She opened the book on her lap, searching through the table of contents—mostly out of habit. She knew the cipher numbers from Nick’s ring by heart now.
9 1894 1, 9 1671 6, 7 161 7, 12 108 6, 2 2229 4, 14 56 6, 11 2141 5, 3 3199 6
She found the ninth chapter: “The Summoner’s Tale.” Each line was numbered, and she flipped pages until she reached: 1894.
The first word hit her with a jolt.Aaron.
She sat up straighter in the bed. His name couldn’t be here by coincidence. This was the book they’d been looking for—she was suddenly sure of it.
It was too late to be any use now, she knew. They’d already fought Eleanor and lost. And yet, she turned more pages, looking for the next word....
Twenty-Six
Joan worked her way through the numbers. When she was done, the decoded message was one simple line.
Aaron my love. Evere myne. Evere thyne. Nicholas.
Joan stared at her penciled letters, at the Middle English spellings. For a long, strange moment, the words didn’t make sense. Not separately, and not together.Aaron, my love.
Then she drew a sharp breath as the meaning jolted through her in a belated shock wave.
Joan and the others had been poring over these numbers for weeks, believing they held the key to stopping Eleanor. But the cipher wasn’t about Eleanor at all. It was a love letter from the Nick of this timeline to his Aaron.
Joan read the message again, trying to take it in. Aaron and Nick had been together in this timeline....
She was stunned. She’d guessed that Aaron was into guys as well as girls. She hadn’t guessed the same for Nick. But beyond that, Aaron and Nick were from two very different worlds—fromJoan’stwo worlds, monster and human—and they couldn’t have been further apart.
I can’t imagine our counterparts working together, Aaron hadsaid to Nick. They’d clashed so much since they’d arrived here that Joan could barely picture it either. They had different backgrounds, different value systems, different visions for the world....
If anything, Joan had imagined them in a future battle between humans and monsters—with Aaron on one side and Nick on the other. And Joan torn between.
And yet, this short note—just eight words—was like a glimpse of another story.
The bedroom door rattled and opened. Aaron had returned with a tray of food. He stopped when he saw Joan. She didn’t know what her expression was, but he said softly, “What is it?”
Joan hesitated, and then held upThe Riverside Chaucer. “I found the book Nick used for the cipher.”
Aaron tilted his head as if there was a strange note in her voice. “You solved it?” He put the tray carefully onto a chest of drawers and came over. “I should have guessed it was Chaucer,” he said slowly. “He’s always been a favorite of mine.”
The bed dipped under his weight as he sat beside her. He’d pulled on a black velvet robe to go downstairs. He elevated everything he wore, and it was luxurious on him—soft and touchable. He accepted the piece of paper from Joan and read what she’d penciled above the numbers.
Joan looked up at him. His long, pale lashes brushed his cheeks as he read over the message again. Joan saw a flare of surprise in his gray eyes. “They were together,” he said. His expression was unreadable now.
Joan waited for him to say something more, but he didn’t.“How do you feel about that?” she asked him. These last few hours with Aaron had felt like a light in the darkness in the wake of Nick’s death. What if this changed things between them?
He gave her an unexpectedly tentative look. “How doyoufeel?”
“I—I don’t know,” she admitted. She bit her lip, thinking about Nick’s and Aaron’s counterparts: the gladiator and the head of the Oliver family.
Aaron’s counterpart had helped Nick escape the arena, and then they’d worked together to free other humans. They’d been born into this terrible world, and they’d imagined something better. They’d tried to make something better.
