“I don’t have an answer for you, Valkyrie. For today, I’m leaving your fate up to chance.” He raised the gun and thumbed back the hammer. “Six chambers, one bullet. Do you want to find out if the universe still loves you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, he just pulled the trigger and Valkyrie flinched, but no shot came.

Skulduggery thumbed back the hammer again. “Have you ever thought about this? What it would be like to go up against each other? I don’t mean as Darquesse and Vile – I mean you and me. Do you think you stand a chance?”

She swallowed. “I don’t know,” she said. “But if you really—”

He pulled the trigger and she cried out, but no shot came.

“Sorry,” Skulduggery said, thumbing back the hammer a third time. “What were you saying?”

“You’re … you’re not going to kill me,” she said.

“I’m not?”

“You won’t. You can’t. I mean too much to you.”

His head tilted. “You should understand, Valkyrie, that I really don’t care about you any more. In fact, I genuinely want you to die, and I want to be the one to kill you.”

Her teeth. They were actually chattering, she was so scared. “You think you do,” she said, her voice a trembling mess, “but you’ve been corrupted. Skulduggery, you have to remember.”

“Well, of course I remember,” Skulduggery said. “And of course I only want to kill you because of Smoke’s pesky little power. But that doesn’t change the fact that I genuinely want to kill you.”

“Please, you’ve got to fight it.”

“No, I don’t.” His finger tightened and she dodged left, but the gun moved with her as the hammer landed on an empty chamber. “Today really is your lucky day, isn’t it? Tell you what – if the next two are empty, for the last one I’ll only shoot you in the leg. How about that?”

She held up her hands, the way he’d taught her. “You’re being manipulated. Are you OK with that? With someone pulling your strings?”

“I’ll deal with all that in my own time, don’t you worry.”

“Skulduggery, you’re my best friend and I love you.”

“That,” Skulduggery said, the hammer clicking back again, “is so sweet of you to say. Put your hands down, Valkyrie. I’m too far away to hit, and we both know you can’t rely on your new powers. They’re far too unstable. So are you, for that matter.”

She hesitated, then dropped her hands and stood up straight. “Fine,” she said.

“Fine?”

“If you’re going to kill me, kill me. I’d rather you do it than anyone else.”

Skulduggery took a moment. “Oh, I see,” he said. “You think I’ll stop myself. You’re betting your life on it.”

“Yes,” she said.