Page 119 of Never a Hero

‘But only the Lius remember,’ Ying said in his beautiful voice, ‘that there was once another family.’

The hairs rose on the back of Joan’s neck. ‘What?’ she whispered.

‘There was once a thirteenth family in London,’ Ying said. ‘Your family. The Graves.’

His words seemed to echo through the courtyard, as if a gong had been struck. They seemed to echo inside Joan. Your family.

I’m not a Hunt, am I? she’d said to Aaron once. But confronted with Ying’s words, she found herself saying, ‘No.’ Her families were the Changs and the Hunts. She’d had the Hunt power as a child.

Aaron had once said to her: As we get older, the only power that remains is the power of our true family. Still, she shook her head. ‘That can’t be true.’ If it was true, Gran would have told her. Except … Gran had tried to speak to her before the attack on the bakery. Your gran wanted to talk to you about something, Dad had said.

‘You reverted the necklace into ore,’ Ying said. ‘That is the Grave family power. They could unmake things; turn back the clock on things. And …’ His eyes softened. ‘You have the look of them, Joan.’

Joan had never even heard of the Graves. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. There was once another family. What had Ying meant by once? ‘Where are they now?’

Ying’s eyes were still soft. ‘The strongest of the Lius remember fragments of the zhenshí de lìshi,’ he said. ‘The true timeline. Collectively, we have some idea of what happened to the Graves.’

Joan stilled. Happened to?

‘The ancient Romans had a punishment,’ Ying said. ‘Damnatio memoriae. Have you heard of it?’

‘No,’ Joan whispered.

‘Those punished with it were condemned to be forgotten by history,’ Ying said. ‘Their statues were smashed, their portraits destroyed, their letters burned. Speaking their name was punishable by death.’ His voice was gentler than his words. ‘But our King was more ruthless than that. We believe he erased your family from the timeline—he assassinated them, hunting down the earliest members of the family through history, so that their children and their children’s children were never born.’

Joan stared at him. She knew violent death. It looked like Gran covered in blood, her breathing hoarse; Lucien Oliver with a sword in his chest; Margie with her eyes wide open. ‘He killed them all?’

‘We don’t know why the King did this,’ Ying said. ‘We believe it was a punishment. We don’t know the transgression.’

Joan couldn’t take in the scale of it. What possible transgression could warrant all those deaths, the erasure of an entire family? She answered her own question. Nothing could warrant a punishment like that. ‘You said they were all gone. I can’t be a member of their family, then, can I?’

The deep lines of Ying’s face made Joan think of wood carvings. Of sorrowful statues. ‘I don’t know how you are here,’ he said. ‘But you are a member of the Grave family.’

‘Do you remember them?’ Joan said slowly. The strongest of the Liu family remembered fragments of the true timeline itself …

‘I remember …’ Ying wasn’t quite looking at Joan now. He was inside his memories, his eyes distant. ‘I was married to a member of the Grave family. I don’t remember her name. The Liu power is perfect memory, but I don’t remember my wife’s name. I don’t remember my children’s names.’

There was deep emotion in his voice, and Joan felt as if she were seeing him for the first time. This was the source of his ever-present sadness. Like Jamie, he’d been born with painful memories.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly.

‘The Liu power has its burdens,’ Ying said. ‘I think you understand.’ He glanced in the direction that Nick had gone.

They were quiet for a time after that. The flame under the teapot flickered out. The weather was turning again. Storm clouds hung over the river, heavy and oppressive; the water whipped in the wind.

Ying leaned over to pour more tea into Joan’s cup and then his own. ‘It is a lot to take in.’

‘I don’t know how to take it in,’ Joan admitted. In a strange, guilty way, she felt worse for Ying than herself. Ying was grieving for the Graves, but Joan couldn’t remember them at all.

But as she thought that, something roiled inside her, as if some half-lost part of her did feel it. As if something in her did remember.

On the Thames, the tide was rising, along with the wind. The tiny red sails of the Thames barges billowed violently. Joan watched a man wind a winch in fast movements, pulling his sail down. She ran a hand over her face, trying to ignore the turbulence inside herself, more violent than the rising wind. She was in the shadow of an apocalypse. She didn’t have the luxury to feel this right now. To process this. And something else was worrying her. ‘What if the Graves were erased because they tore up the timeline?’ she asked. ‘What if they were erased because they were a threat to the world?’

He would have stopped it, Astrid had said. But you stopped him.

What would Nick have stopped? Maybe he would have stopped Joan. Maybe that was how he’d have saved everyone.

Ying was silent for a long moment. ‘I do not believe that. There were no holes in the timeline when the Graves were here. No unusual fluctuations.’ He searched Joan’s face. ‘You keep speaking as if you are some destructive force—some creature who deserves to be put to death by the Court. You are not. You are a member of a lost family.’

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