Page 91 of Once a Villain
Sometimes I catch you looking at me, Nick had said to her in the garden,like you’re comparing yourself to me. Like you’re ashamed of what you are. But I don’t see myself like that.I don’t seeyoulike that.
She’d smoothed him out like she was smoothing the sand—from the real, complicated person he’d been. He’d been so much more than the picture she’d made of him. And maybe she’d done that to herself too, forced herself and Nick into a false dichotomy ofmonsterandhuman.
“I didn’t see him as clearly as I should have,” Joan said, “but I want to remember him as he really was. I don’t have anything left of him now but memories, and I want those memories to be true.”
“He loved you,” Aaron said softly. “I saw it in his eyes every time he looked at you.”
Joan nodded and felt a tear slide down her cheek. It was the last thing Nick had said to her before he’d risen into the arena. She’d loved him too. She’d loved him desperately. “I know you didn’t like him very much.”
She looked up at Aaron and couldn’t help but bite back a smile at his soft gray tracksuit—not at all his usual style. Joan wouldn’t have even guessed he owned comfortable clothes—not any version of him—but Aaron had found a set for himself and for her with unerring instinct, at the back of a drawer in his counterpart’s dressing room. His counterpart seemed to love a motif—even these had the Oliver mermaid stitched lovingly on the trouser pockets.
Aaron gave her a small, wry smile back. “He didn’t likeme.”
“He didn’t know you.”
“Perhaps.”
Joan swiped at her face. It hadn’t been that way in this timeline. Nick’s counterpart had loved Aaron’s, and Aaron’s counterpart had clearly loved him back—so much that he’d overthrown his own father to keep Nick safe. Strange to think that, in this universe, it might have been Aaron crying here in the empty arena over Nick.
She remembered again the message from Nick’s counterpart to Aaron’s. Before the numbers of the cipher, Nick’s counterpart had told Aaron:You can get to her. You have what you need.Howhadthey been planning to kill Eleanor? She’d never figured it out.
Joan supposed that it didn’t really matter now. Eleanor had won, and they’d lost. There was nothing more they could do.
They sat there in the sand until the chill started to seep in. And then a little longer after that.I sat in that garden for hours, Aaron had said. Joan understood the impulse.
She was deep in her thoughts when a voice punctured the stillness of the night, startling her. She stood, pulling Aaron up, before she’d even really registered the red uniform of a Court Guard walking across the arena.
“You can’t be here! You’re trespassing!” The guard was in her mid-thirties, with severe eyebrows and a bob of hair the color of dead grass. She started to frown as she got closer. “Lord Oliver?” she said uncertainly. “What are you doing here?” She didn’t sound nearly as deferential toward Aaron as everyone else in this world had been. She was suspicious, Joan realized slowly. Aaron had supposedly executed Nick Ward, and yet Nick had shown up in the arena this afternoon. Everyone had seen him.
At the same time, it was becoming clear that Eleanor hadn’t put out an arrest warrant for Aaron. And she hadn’t publicly repudiated him. In fact, she’d implied in front of the whole crowd that Nick hadn’t quite beenNick.
The guard seemed to conclude that all this was above her pay grade. She straightened into a more formal posture. “Lord Oliver,” she said again, in a marginally thawed tone. “May I help you with something?” She glanced at Joan—or tried to. Aaron had put Joan a little behind him, keeping her concealed. Joan still had a wanted poster with her face on it.
Aaron’s head tilted arrogantly now as he pulled on the cloak of his counterpart again. Joan could see it was beginning to fit him more and more uncomfortably, though. “What was done with Nick Ward’s body?” he asked, voice hard.
Joan had the feeling he was trying to draw the guard’s attention back to him, but she suppressed a sharp breath. She hadn’trealized how much she’d wanted that information until Aaron had asked for it.
The guard must have thought it a strange question in the middle of the night, in the middle of the empty arena, but she answered. “The colosseum is on Argent territory, my lord. I assume the Argents took custody of the body.”
“Nick was an Oliver gladiator,” Aaron said coldly. “His body is Oliver property.”
“My lord.” The guard shifted her weight. She definitely thought this was all above her pay grade now. “Lord Cassius Argent mentioned a plan to display him in the Argent house....”
Cassius Argent’s leering face came back to Joan. At the Pelican, he’d told Aaron,If we’d caught the gladiator, we’d have put him in our trophy room.
Joan shuddered. Was Nick’s body going to be displayed among stuffed lions and stags, for monsters to gawk at and mock? She couldn’t bear the thought.
Behind their backs, Aaron squeezed her hand comfortingly. “That will be all,” he said, waving dismissively, as if the guard was one of his own servants.
The guard was irritated—Joan could see it—but she only nodded and trekked back across the sand.
“Cassius Argent has a trophy room,” Joan said, as soon as the guard was out of earshot. Every time she thought she’d seen the worst of this world, she was shocked anew. “He’s going to put Nick in it like a stag on a wall.”
Aaron’s breath hissed out. “I’ll speak to the Argents tomorrow morning.”
“Do you think your standing’s changed here since this afternoon? The guard seemed suspicious....”
“I think I can brazen it out. In societies like this, people tend to mind their own business when it comes to people in positions of authority. If I’m walking around free, then as far as they’re concerned...”
