Page 117 of Only a Monster

He made a soft sound and reached for her with a kind of desperate relief that made Joan’s heart jump. He was bare-necked, she realised as he pulled her into his arms. All she’d have to do to was slide her hand to his neck, and he’d be dead. His trust almost undid her.

‘I’ve loved you since the moment I saw you,’ she said. Since then and before that. Now and forever.

‘I love you,’ he whispered back. ‘I always have.’

Joan closed her eyes. She could feel tears starting as his mouth touched hers. And the timeline responded. The monster part of her sensed it as her mouth opened under his: a shift in the world, as though vast jagged pieces were knitting together. The timeline was repairing itself.

Just for a second, she let herself feel it. She imagined that she and Nick could really have this. That they could be happy.

And then she opened her eyes and unleashed her strange power on him.

He huffed a shocked breath into her mouth. ‘Joan?’ He tried to pull back, but Joan tightened her arms around him. She knew what she had to do.

Joan drew power from the depths of herself, and her power responded as if it had been waiting for her call. Something forbidden, one of the guards had called it.

In a way, Joan had always known what her power could do. She hadn’t transmuted the metal into stone; she’d turned it back to ore. She’d unmade it.

And now she unmade Nick.

There was nothing gentle about it. Power poured out of her. His body jerked and shook with it. His face became a mask of pain. Joan, he mouthed. Joan, please. Joan forced herself to keep going, even as he started to scream.

She was properly crying now. Around them, the house started to shake.

Joan unmade him. The force of it shook the walls. Plaster cracked and dust rained down around them. She unmade everything Nick had done, and everything that had been done to him.

She unmade the lives Nick had taken. She brought her family back.

She unmade Nick until he wasn’t the hero anymore. Until the Nick she loved was gone.

And, at the end of it, everything had changed.

EPILOGUE

The last weeks of summer were long and warm, even as the leaves started to turn. Everyone agreed that it had been the loveliest London summer in years.

In the city’s parks, wildflowers bloomed later and longer than anyone could remember: sweet peas, daisies, violets, and honeysuckle.

Joan missed the end of it. She’d come down with what Gran worried was the flu and Uncle Gus thought might be heatstroke.

But Joan knew it wasn’t a human illness. Unmaking Nick had pushed her power beyond its limit. She’d burned through every last spark of it to change the timeline. Now, whatever ability she’d had to unmake things was gone. She could feel the absence inside herself even after her body started to heal.

And her power wasn’t the only absence inside her.

She dreamed of him. Sometimes he was in the Holland House library, sometimes tied to a chair in his childhood home. Always, he was screaming, begging her to stop. Joan woke shaking and reaching for him, words still thick in her mouth. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you.

If the dreams were bad, though, being awake was worse. The last moments at the house came back to her over and over. She remembered how Nick’s eyes had widened. How his chest had shuddered as he’d started to scream. She remembered the look on his face as he’d realised that she was doing this to him. That she wasn’t going to stop. She’d told him she loved him. She’d kissed him. And then she’d torn him apart.

Too weak to get out of bed, all Joan could do was lie there and remember and remember and remember.

No one else did.

‘Holland House?’ Gran felt Joan’s forehead with the back of her hand. ‘You mean the old ruins in Holland Park? Why would you want to go down there?’

‘I mean Holland House! The house in the park!’ Joan tried to sit up, but Gran coaxed her back down.

‘There’s nothing there, love.’ Gran sounded worried. ‘You still have a fever. I’m going to call Dr de Witt again.’

Joan had never been a good patient. As soon as she was strong enough to stand, she pronounced herself well and headed straight for Kensington High Street.

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