stood up, singing Abyssinia’s praises for all to hear. But, when Abyssinia rose to toast him in return, I ran my sword through her back.”
Valkyrie didn’t say anything.
“Mevolent gave me the opportunity to fight and kill,” Skulduggery continued. “Abyssinia would have ended the war far too quickly. There would have been no one left to battle if she took over. The world would burn and she would sit in her throne and laugh. So, before she could recover, I lifted her off her feet, walked to the window and tossed her through. She fell to the rocks. It was a long way down.”
“Christ.”
“Yes.”
“That’s … I don’t know what to say.”
“The story isn’t over.”
“Oh, God. Maybe I do need to sit down.”
Skulduggery stood and she took his place on the edge of the bed. “Carry on,” she said.
“Her body wasn’t where it should have been,” Skulduggery said. “We found a trail of blood leading away and then … nothing. But there was no way she could have survived that. The sword was enough to have killed her, let alone the fall. It was assumed that animals had taken her corpse away, or even cannibals.”
“Cannibals?”
“There’d been reports of cannibals in the area. Anyway, the war went on. I killed and butchered old friends and innocent people and I did so without one shred of remorse. And then I had my epiphany.”
“Epiphany?”
“My moment of clarity.”
“I know what the word means, I just want to know what this particular epiphany was.”
“It was not relevant to this story,” Skulduggery said, “that’s what it was. Anyway, I saw the error of my ways, took off the armour, hid it in a mountain where no one would ever, ever find it, and returned to being good old me.
“Then, a few years later, Abyssinia returned. Rather than die a painful death alone in the shadows, she had somehow become vastly more powerful. She attacked both Mevolent’s army and ours. She decimated battalions. No one could stand against her. Then a deal was struck.”
“Between Abyssinia and Mevolent?”
“Between Mevolent and us.”
“Oh my God.” Valkyrie shook her head. “I need to sit down.”
“You are sitting down.”
“I need to sit down more.”
“A secret deal,” Skulduggery went on. “A few soldiers from our side and a few soldiers from their side. The Dead Men and the Diablerie, working together.”
“You’re joking,” Valkyrie said.
He shrugged. “It made sense. She was an enemy to us both, so we pooled our resources and set off. It was an uneasy alliance, to say the least. As the weeks went by, tensions grew. The only reason we didn’t murder each other was because we finally picked up Abyssinia’s trail. She was travelling with a boy that turned out to be her son.”
“So what happened?”
“Abyssinia led us into a trap we barely survived. It was only when China held a knife to the boy’s throat that Abyssinia stopped her attack. We offered her a deal. We would let her son go free if she allowed us to kill her.”
The room was quiet. “And did she accept?” Valkyrie asked.
“She didn’t have a choice,” Skulduggery said. “We killed her and we let the boy walk, then we dismembered her, cut off her head and burned her limbs. But it was only when I carved her heart from her chest that it finally stopped beating.”
“Jesus,” Valkyrie whispered.
“And that’s it. That’s the story.”
“So wait a second,” Valkyrie said. “You betrayed her, threw her out of a window, tracked her down and threatened her son, and she agreed to let you kill her … and at no stage during all this did she tell anyone that you were Lord Vile?”
“As far as I’m aware, she didn’t breathe a word of it to anyone.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Skulduggery said. “I hope I don’t get a chance to ask her.”
“What happened to the son?”
“No idea.”
“Could he be this King of the Darklands guy that Auger is destined to fight?”
“Possibly.”
“She ever mention that to you, the fact that she was the Princess of the Darklands?”
“It never came up in conversation.”
“Where are the Darklands? I mean, is it an actual place or, like, a state of mind or something?”
“I don’t know,” Skulduggery said.
“I’m just asking because if it’s an actual place, with people and a royal family and stuff, then your girlfriend was an actual princess.”
“Ex-girlfriend.”
“Yes, because that’s the point we need to be focusing on.” Valkyrie stood. “OK. OK, that’s a lot to take in.”
“The fact that my ex-girlfriend was one of the most dangerous people I have ever encountered, or the fact that I had a girlfriend?”
“Both, actually.” She nodded. “It’ll just take me a while to digest all this. But for now I’m ready to go back in. Unless you have any other bombshells about your past that you’d like to share …?”
“None that I’d like to share, no.” He went to the door and opened it. “After you,” he said.
They rejoined Melior in his kitchen. He frowned at Valkyrie.
“Are you OK?” he asked. “You’ve gone quite pale.”
“It’s been an eventful few minutes,” she answered, “but here’s the upshot. Abyssinia was super-powerful and used other people’s life forces to heal her injuries and grow in strength. She was finally defeated and chopped up into little bits. Her heart was cut out. Skulduggery, what happened then?”
“We took the heart back with us,” Skulduggery said, “put it in a box, put the box in a room and built a prison around it.”
“Coldheart,”
