Page 134 of Never a Hero

Or would it have?

She saw again the tangled bodies in the van. The terror on the bystanders’ faces.

There had to be a way to explain to Eleanor what Joan had seen. Eleanor wouldn’t be bringing back the true timeline, but ushering in something horrific. ‘You’ve been working to create a world where monsters rule,’ Joan said to her. ‘But if you just want to bring the Graves back, then—’

‘What I want,’ Eleanor said, hard, ‘what I’m going to take, is a world where no one can hurt my family again. No human and no monster. I’m going to make a world where they’ll survive, no matter what.’

‘Eleanor—’ Joan said, and Eleanor’s face crumpled a little. Joan hesitated, and then realised that she’d never said Eleanor’s name in her presence.

‘Do you really not know me?’ Eleanor whispered to her. ‘Do you really not remember me at all?’

Joan was thrown by the non sequitur and by the momentary note of truce. She searched Eleanor’s pretty face—a face from a fairytale—trying to find something she recognised. But she didn’t feel anything but distrust. Was this how Aaron had felt when Joan had told him that he’d once known her? The thought broke her heart.

And had Eleanor always been like this? She kept talking to Joan like they’d once been close. It was your house, she’d said. We grew up there together.

But …

Joan and Nick had been together in the true timeline, and Eleanor had torn them apart. She’d had Nick tortured and orphaned by a monster. She’d made him into a monster slayer, and then he’d led the massacre of Joan’s family.

Eleanor had to have known that the timeline would keep forcing Joan and Nick back together after that. She’d broken the two of them so much that they’d keep hurting each other until one of them died. It was too cruel and too elegant to be an accident.

A shot of anger went through Joan again. ‘I know enough,’ she said. ‘I know you tried to destroy all our lives! I know you’re still trying to!’

Anger flashed over Eleanor’s own face then. The moment of softness was gone. ‘You never change,’ she snapped at Joan. ‘You always side with the wrong people.’ Her jaw tightened. ‘You think I ruined your life?’

‘You did,’ Joan said. Why was Eleanor even questioning it? ‘You know you did.’

Eleanor took a step toward her, and Nick twitched again. He wanted to make a move. His eyes flicked between a red-haired man behind Eleanor and a dark-haired woman. Both had guns focused on him.

‘Do you know why the Graves were punished?’ Eleanor asked Joan softly. ‘Do you know why the King erased our family from history?’

Ying hadn’t known. Joan shook her head. She’d only just learned that the Graves even existed. She felt herself tense up, though.

‘It was because of you,’ Eleanor gritted out. ‘You and him.’ She looked at Nick. ‘Everything I’m doing now is because of you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Joan said. How could she and Nick be responsible for something that the King had done?

Eleanor’s fists clenched. ‘The two of you convinced our family that there could be peace between humans and monsters. You convinced them to pursue it.’

Joan felt her mouth drop open. Nick’s forehead creased; he hadn’t expected to hear that either. Even so, the truth of Eleanor’s words rang through Joan like a bell.

Just before the end, Nick had offered Joan peace. He’d suggested exactly this—and Joan had rejected it. She’d unmade him. Joan swallowed. She’d speculated that the Joan of the true timeline hadn’t even known that she was a monster. How else could she have made her relationship with Nick work? But maybe this was how. Maybe she and Nick had tried to bring monsters and humans together …

‘You wanted to stop monsters from travelling,’ Eleanor said to Joan, and Joan tried to absorb that too. ‘The arrogance of you! Convincing our family to go against their own birthright!’

‘They agreed to it?’ Joan asked, shocked. From the flash of rage in Eleanor’s face, they had. Joan couldn’t imagine it. Could an entire monster family really have been persuaded that peace with humans was possible?

Who had the Graves been that they’d listened to Joan and Nick? Joan felt a thrum again in her chest. An echo of the grief she couldn’t consciously feel. The memory of the body.

‘You disagreed,’ Aaron said to Eleanor. Joan blinked at his unexpected interjection.

‘Monsters are supposed to travel in time,’ Eleanor said to him, chin lifting.

‘It’s no one’s birthright to steal life,’ Nick said, just as hard. Eleanor’s eyes darkened even more; Joan felt a thrill of fear. There were still guns trained on them all.

‘So you informed on them to the King,’ Aaron said to Eleanor. And Joan was surprised by that too. She wouldn’t have made that leap. She wasn’t even sure it was true until Eleanor’s expression turned defiant.

Aaron gazed at her coldly. He hated disloyalty.

---