physically hurt us, but his goals are just as damaging. We need to treat him just like any other hostile.”
“Would you kill him?” asked Valkyrie. “He’s a pacifist who only wants to help people. And there’s no guarantee that mankind would destroy itself. It might all work out according to Argeddion’s plan. Who are we to say it won’t?”
“Are you willing to take that risk?”
“I just... I don’t feel right about this. He wants to make the world a better place and we want to keep the world as it is. That doesn’t sound particularly... heroic.”
“We have to maintain the status quo, Valkyrie. It’s not our job to change the world. That’s for the mortals to do.”
“So you would kill him?”
There was a pause. “I believe his plan would result in billions dead. Yes, I would kill him.”
“I… I don’t think I could.”
He turned his head to her. “I’m not asking you to.”
The Bentley pulled in at the pier and Valkyrie got out. It was just past ten but she was exhausted. The air lifted her to her window and she climbed in. Her room was empty. She sat at her desk, where schoolbooks lay open. She yawned, and her reflection came in. It shut the door behind it.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” it said back. “You look like you’ve had a rough day.”
“Rough enough.”
“Where’s your jacket?”
Valkyrie glowered. “I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to go to bed. You finished our homework?”
It shook its head. “Another half-hour or so, I’d say. Can you wait until then?”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ll go for a walk, actually.” She got up. “Hey, I want your opinion on something.”
“Sure,” said the reflection, stepping towards the mirror.
“No,” said Valkyrie. “I want your opinion as the reflection of me the last time I was here, not as the reflection of me now. If you know what I know, then your perspective will be my perspective, and I don’t want my perspective. I want your perspective.”
“For anyone else, that would be overly complicated. OK. What do you want your old perspective on?”
“Argeddion is out. He’s free. He wants to make every mortal magic and live in a kingdom of enlightenment and righteousness. It sounds lovely, to be honest, but according to Skulduggery and the others, it’d never work and we’d all end up killing each other. But he’s really powerful, and the only way we had to stop him was to...”
“Become Darquesse,” said the reflection.
“Yes. But I can’t do that any more. He got in my head, he blocked her off. I can’t Hulk out and Argeddion took Skulduggery’s armour, made it vanish. It’s not destroyed, or else all the Necromancer magic would return to Skulduggery, but it’s hidden.”
“You’re disappointed.”
“Argeddion’s at least as powerful as Darquesse. We needed her.”
“Needing her is dangerous.”
“I know.”
“You might have been able to stop Argeddion, but who would stop you?”
“Hopefully, Skulduggery.”
“He’d have put on the armour and gone after you? After what happened last time?”
Valkyrie collapsed back into her chair. “I don’t know. Yes. He did it before.”
“He stopped you, eventually, after you both tore up O’Connell Street. You tried to kill people. You tried to take down a helicopter. And what about Skulduggery? When he puts on that armour, he’s a killer. You know he is.”
“But last time—”
“Last time was a fluke,” the reflection said. “Somehow, he managed to regain control of himself and he talked you down. But if you let her take over again, she won’t go so quietly next time.”
“Well, we don’t have that option any more.”
“That shouldn’t have even been an option. Argeddion has a plan that might backfire – but your plan was to send two killers after him? What’s the term that was used before? World-breakers? You were going to send two world-breakers after him? There is a risk of his plan going wrong and resulting in death and destruction. But if you had unleashed Darquesse, you’d be guaranteeing that people would die.”
“Skulduggery would have stopped me.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“I trust him.”
“And that’s the problem.”
“What? What’s the problem?”
The reflection hunkered down and rested her folded arms on Valkyrie’s knees. “China told you once that Skulduggery would kill you without hesitation if he had to. He’d sacrifice anyone for the good of the mission. When you realised you were Darquesse, this was practically a comfort. You knew that if things got bad enough, you could rely on Skulduggery to put a bullet in your brain to stop you from killing your parents.”
“That’s ridiculous. I never—”
“You can lie to yourself,” the reflection said, “but you can’t lie to me.”
Valkyrie shut her mouth.
The reflection continued. “But things have changed. Your relationship with Skulduggery has deepened, you know it has. You know the lengths he would go to for you, and that’s the problem. Valkyrie, he would sacrifice the world to save you.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“No,” said the reflection. “But it’s what you suspect.”
“He wouldn’t let me do that. He just wouldn’t.”
“Maybe not. But he’d waste time. He’d second-guess himself. He’d look for another way. He wouldn’t go for the kill shot when he was given the chance, and by then, it might be too late. You don’t have that reassurance any more. It’s the two of you against the world. But that’s not what you need. You need him with his finger on the trigger, and the gun to your head. You should be thankful Darquesse is no longer an option. I can’t see how it could have ended well.”
Valkyrie sighed. “How am I supposed to know what to do?”
“You’re not,” the reflection said gently. “You’re seventeen. You’re supposed to be dealing with school and hormones and dim-witted parents. You’re supposed to be finding out who you are as a person.”
“But
