“If you care for him, and I know you care for him, you won’t want to hurt him. But time passes and feelings deepen. And that’s when the real hurt will set in. Are you taking him to the Ball?”

Valkyrie blinked. “The what?”

“The Requiem Ball, dear.”

“Oh. Um, I don’t know. Am I even going? Skulduggery didn’t say anything.”

“Of course you’re going. You’ve saved the world, haven’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but the Requiem Ball is to commemorate the end of the war with Mevolent, and I had nothing to do with that.”

“Do you really think you’d be allowed to miss it because of a trifling matter of details? If you don’t go this year, you’ll have to wait another ten years for it to come around again, and that would never do. Oh, you’ll love it. The women dress in the most beautiful gowns, the men wear tuxedos and we dance the night away. It is quite the social highlight of the decade.”

“When you say ‘dance’,” Valkyrie said, “you don’t mean the way you’d dance at a nightclub, do you? Because that’s the only kind of dancing I know how to do.”

“It’s nothing extravagant,” China assured her. “A waltz or two. A tango. A minuet. Even a quadrille, if we’re feeling debauched. We’re going to have to get you into a gloriously decadent dress, I think, with gloriously decadent shoes that will make you even taller than you are now.”

Skulduggery knocked on the door, and China let him in. He was, as ever, impeccably dressed. “We were just talking about the Requiem Ball,” she said. “I assume the two of you are going?”

“Naturally,” Skulduggery replied, removing his hat.

“We are?” Valkyrie asked, clearly surprised. “You didn’t tell me.”

“Did I not? How unlike me. Still, I simply couldn’t deprive you of your chance to see me in a tuxedo. I wear it well, as you can imagine. Besides, it would be rude not to invite you. Technically, you own the venue where it’s being held.”

“I what?”

“It used to be held in a mansion owned by the late Corrival Deuce,” China said, “but your dear uncle Gordon has offered us the use of his house instead. Or your house. Whichever it is.”

“Ah,” said Valkyrie. “Well, it’s certainly big enough. I mean, it’s got rooms I never go into. Will I have to do anything? Like stand at the door and welcome people, or…?”

“Nothing like that,” Skulduggery said, sounding amused. “You’ll be treated as just another very important guest. There’ll be nothing for you to worry about. And if all the smiling and small talk proves too much for you, you can always disappear into Gordon’s study and read one of his books until everyone leaves.”