Page 104 of Never a Hero

‘What?’ Aaron said. He’d taken a breath to snap at her, but now he was just staring. ‘What safe house?’ He seemed to gather himself. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘It was in Southwark. A one-bedroom house with a little kitchen, a sitting room. Your mother had stayed there.’

Aaron looked shaken for a moment. ‘I would never—’ He stopped. His fists clenched and opened, and the shock slowly faded. When he spoke again, his voice was cold. ‘A few minutes ago, you used the term true Oliver power. Where did you hear that?’

Joan hesitated, thrown by the change of subject. ‘From you,’ she said. ‘You told me about it.’

‘That’s a lie,’ Aaron blurted. ‘That’s—’ He worked his jaw. ‘Go on, then,’ he said challengingly, full of disbelief. ‘Tell me the circumstances. Tell me exactly what I said.’

Joan remembered his soft footsteps in the hallway as she was leaving the safe house. Let me come with you, he’d said. ‘I’d figured out where the hero was,’ she told him. ‘I knew I had to go after him alone. But … you intercepted me before I could go. You wanted to come with me.’

Aaron looked both sceptical and pleased, as if he’d caught Joan in a clear lie. ‘You make me sound so noble.’

He had been. ‘You don’t think you’d fight a monster slayer?’

‘You really don’t know me,’ Aaron whispered.

‘Maybe you’re braver than you think.’

‘I’ve never been susceptible to false flattery,’ Aaron said. ‘And I can’t help but notice that you still haven’t told me how you know the term true Oliver power.’

He really didn’t believe it. He didn’t see himself that way. Joan thought back to that night with an ache. She’d missed him. ‘We’d been looking for a way to change the timeline,’ she said. ‘To bring our families back from the dead.’

‘It’s not possible to change the timeline,’ Aaron said again.

‘That’s what you thought last time,’ Joan agreed. ‘But by the end, I guess you’d changed your mind, because you told me that if I managed to undo the massacre, I could never meet you. I could never trust you. You said …’ I won’t remember what you mean to me. Joan heard her own voice crack. ‘You—you said you’d hate me in this new timeline.’

Aaron’s expression was hard. ‘Well, your fictional me was right about that.’

Joan’s heart hurt like someone was squeezing a fist around it. He’d warned her that he’d hate her, but she hadn’t understood how it would feel. She forced herself to keep talking. ‘You told me about the trial that monsters undertake as children—the trial of family power. You took yours when you were just nine years old.’

‘I was precocious,’ Aaron said, but he frowned a little. As if answering a question he’d raised himself, he said, ‘It’s common enough knowledge that I manifested my power early.’

‘And more strongly,’ Joan said. ‘Ordinary Olivers can differentiate humans from monsters. But you demonstrated the true Oliver power—the rare ability to differentiate family from family.’

A flicker in Aaron’s expression. Joan knew it was because she’d correctly described the power. The Olivers kept that aspect of their power a secret.

‘After you demonstrated that power, you were taken to another room,’ Joan said, and Aaron’s chin jerked up. She really had his attention now. ‘They showed you a man in a cage with iron bars. They used a cattle prod on him until he looked at you. And they told you to arrest or kill anyone who had eyes like his.’

‘You must have heard that from someone else,’ Aaron whispered. ‘I’d never tell anyone that.’

‘You told me that you never saw anyone like him again until you met me.’ She remembered how he’d pushed her hair from her face as if he’d been about to kiss her. ‘You gave me a brooch just before I left,’ she said. ‘You’d found it in a cupboard at the safe house. A brown bird in a cage.’

‘What?’ Aaron sounded truly shocked now, and Joan’s focus shifted from the images in her head to him. He was staring at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. As if he’d forgotten that he was a prisoner here.

‘It had belonged to your mother,’ Joan said. ‘It had time imbued in it—fifty years. You told me that it wouldn’t feel as bad to travel that way.’

‘Why would you feel bad?’ Aaron said—it was a real question, not a challenge. He answered himself softly, ‘Because you’re half-human, and you’d barely travelled. It would have been easier for you to travel with a token.’

‘It was,’ Joan admitted. ‘It was still human time. It was still wrong, but …’ It had been just as bad morally, but it hadn’t felt as bad—and what did that say about her?

‘Why would I give you my mother’s brooch?’ Aaron murmured, almost to himself. He hadn’t taken his eyes from her.

‘Because of the time imbued in it,’ Joan explained again. Aaron didn’t reply. He just stared at her.

‘Why do the Nightingales think that you informed on her?’ Joan whispered. ‘I know you didn’t.’

‘Why do you keep saying that?’ Aaron said. He sounded wary, but there was a new vulnerable note in his voice as well.

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