Page 133 of Never a Hero

‘It was beautiful,’ Eleanor said, for once without any hint of cruelty. ‘One of the wonders of the world.’ She sounded nostalgic as she gazed at the space where it had once been. ‘Nineteen arches with water roaring through them. The daring and the drunk used to fly through the rapids in rowboats, surfing the rising tide.’

Aaron covered Joan’s hand with his own. She blinked at him, and he curled her fingers gently into a fist. He squeezed once and then let go. It took her a second to understand that it was a technique for staying grounded in the here and now. He was helping her not to fade out. She nodded slightly, holding her hand in the fist Aaron had made.

Eleanor was still talking. ‘For more than five hundred years, people lived on that bridge. There were houses and shops … jewellers, booksellers, glove-makers, tailors … even a drawbridge to defend London from invaders. And the centrepiece of it all was a grand four-storey mansion made completely of wood—not an iron nail in it.’ Eleanor’s voice softened. ‘When I was a little girl, I grew up in that house. I still dream of it. The never-ending rush of the river like a hundred waterfalls.’

Joan squeezed her fist even tighter. Her recent dreams hadn’t been so pleasant. For months, she’d dreamed of Nick crying out at finding his family dead, of Gran’s last breaths. ‘I don’t care where you grew up!’ she blurted. Eleanor turned to her, eyes distant as if she was still half in her memories. Then she focused on Joan, and for a weird second, she almost looked hurt. Joan couldn’t believe it. Eleanor was hurt?

‘You ruined my life!’ Joan told her, fury rising to the surface. ‘My family died because of you! Aaron’s family died! Jamie’s! Tom’s! Nick’s!’ She felt Nick shift at that, confused. He didn’t know what Eleanor had done to him. What she’d manipulated him into doing. ‘You tortured Jamie,’ Joan said. Jamie had nightmares about that. ‘Do you think any of us cares about your life?’

‘You really don’t remember any of it, do you?’ Eleanor said. ‘You don’t remember the house.’

What was she talking about? ‘Why would I remember it? Why would I care about some house that hasn’t been here for two hundred years?’

‘Because it was your house,’ Eleanor said, and now she didn’t just look hurt—her voice was thick with it. ‘It was ours! We grew up there together. And all this’—she gestured at the swath of the north and south banks—‘all this belonged to our family! It belonged to the Graves!’

Joan stared at her. ‘What?’ The word came out as a barely voiced breath. Your family, Ying had said. The Graves. Joan had hardly begun to process what he’d told her. And she really couldn’t process this. She shook her head. ‘You and me are not family!’

‘Yes, we are, Joan.’ The hurt still shaded Eleanor’s voice. ‘Not like you and her.’ She jerked a chin at Ruth, who glared at her.

‘You’re wrong. Ruth is my family!’ Joan said. There was no way she was related to Eleanor. Eleanor had brutally converted Nick into a killer. She’d set him on a path to massacring all the monster families—including Joan’s. She’d taunted Joan about the Hunts’ deaths.

‘Who are the Graves?’ Tom said.

Eleanor’s jaw tightened. ‘There are twelve monster families in London now,’ she said, ‘but there was once a thirteenth family—the Graves.’ A gust of wind blew from the river, rippling the base of her heavy dress. ‘Our territory was here—in the vicinity of London Bridge. Our back gardens were Borough Market and the original Globe.’

Joan stared. Ying had told her about the Graves, but some part of her hadn’t wanted to believe it.

‘A thirteenth family?’ Ruth said. Aaron looked confused too. Jamie alone was unsurprised. Only the Lius remember that there was once another family.

‘Ruth …’ Joan said. Monster families weren’t sorted by blood, but by power. Joan had the Grave power, and in the monster world that made her a Grave, not a Hunt. But Ruth would still think of Joan as her family, right? Joan thought of Ruth as family. She thought of herself as a Hunt.

‘I don’t understand,’ Ruth said. She turned to Eleanor. ‘You said there was once? What does that mean? Why haven’t I heard of them?’

‘Some people call it Damnatio memoriae,’ Eleanor said, and Aaron drew in a sharp, shocked breath in response. ‘The King punished the Graves by erasing them from the timeline.’ Eleanor turned back to that empty space in the sky where the Graves’ house had once been. ‘He pulled us up by the roots for the most part. He killed our earliest ancestors so that their children and their children’s children and their children were never born. And he didn’t just punish us … He murdered people in other families who protested, loyal friends, those who sheltered us … By the end of it, if anyone remembered us, they didn’t dare whisper our name.’

‘How did you survive?’ Joan asked Eleanor. How had Joan survived?

Eleanor just stared at her, and Joan felt her own breath shudder out. She hated Eleanor—hated her. But she couldn’t help but feel horror for her too. She knew what it was like to lose your whole family.

But … this was Joan’s family too. She’d have been grieving them if she’d remembered them. If Eleanor was telling the truth, the King’s punishment had worked on Joan. And she couldn’t get her head around that. She felt horror and sympathy for that lost family and for the people who’d tried to protect them, but it wasn’t visceral. It wasn’t anything like what she’d felt when the Hunts had died.

No. That wasn’t quite true. There was a resonance in her chest when she thought of the Graves, as if her body remembered what her mind didn’t. She was reminded of the suppressed feeling that always came when she thought about Mum.

And did all this mean that Mum had been—

Joan pushed away the thought. She couldn’t handle that right now.

‘Erased,’ Aaron murmured. Joan could guess what he was thinking. This was why his mother had died—because she’d tried to protect a member of the Grave family. And Aaron himself had the true Oliver power—the ability to differentiate family from family. He’d been unknowingly tasked from childhood with finding the last of the Graves. To finish the erasure that the King had started.

It struck Joan then that Aaron had seen Eleanor as a Nightingale. Eleanor must have disguised herself from him somehow …

Eleanor turned away from the empty sky, her blue eyes darkening with anguish, and for a split second, Joan could see everything that Eleanor had been holding inside. It was like glimpsing the void itself—a bottomless well of grief. And Joan’s understanding suddenly reframed. She’d thought that Eleanor had wanted to take power from the King, but she saw now what Eleanor was really doing.

‘You want to create a new timeline,’ Joan whispered, ‘because you want to bring them back.’ It was what Joan had done last time for the Hunts.

Eleanor’s hands clenched into fists. ‘I am going to bring them back.’

Joan herself had said something very much like that when the Hunts had died. We’ll undo it, she’d told Ruth. We’ll get them back. How had she missed the jagged edge of Eleanor’s icy exterior? How had she missed Eleanor’s grief when she’d felt those feelings herself? Joan had had a one-track desperation after the massacre of the Hunts. Nothing would have stopped her from bringing them back.

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