“Never …” Omen said quietly.

“No, she’s right,” said Valkyrie. “Carry on, Never.”

“Thank you, Valkyrie. I know Darquesse isn’t you. We all know how it happened. Kind of. They teach us it here, did you know that? But they leave some bits out, such as exactly how your reflection malfunctioned so badly. I think they don’t tell us that bit because they’re afraid we might try something similar with our own reflections. Which is a bit of a laugh, to be honest. I mean, why would we want to copy something that murdered so many innocent people?”

“I never meant for any of it to happen,” Valkyrie said.

Never nodded. “That bit they do tell us. They say that Darquesse became Darquesse because of a series of totally random circumstances that Valkyrie Cain had no control over. But I think you did have control – you just decided not to use it.”

“That’s not true.”

“Wasn’t there a prophecy, or something? Didn’t the Sensitives have dreams about Darquesse, years before it all kicked off?”

Valkyrie stood up a little straighter, though it looked like something was twisting in her gut. “Yes,” she said.

“But when you found out that Darquesse was your true name, that you were Darquesse, you didn’t stop, did you? You didn’t walk away and never use magic again – even though you’d had warnings that Darquesse would, at some stage, kill the world.”

“I thought I could stop it from happening.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

“You failed.”

“Yes.”

“You should have walked away, but you loved it too much. You loved being the hero. You loved hanging out with Skulduggery Pleasant and Tanith Low and the Dead Men … you loved hanging out with people like Billy-Ray Sanguine, a known murderer. You loved the adventure.”

“I did.”

Never nodded. “My mum met you once. You wouldn’t remember – it was only for a few minutes. It was at the Requiem Ball. She says you were one of the most arrogant people she’d ever talked to. She said you were so young and full of confidence, and you looked at all the other sorcerers like you were so much better than them. She said she knew right then that you were trouble. Just trouble, waiting to happen.”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Never.”

“Could you argue, even if you wanted to?”

“Yes. Some of your points I would very much argue. But not the main point. The main point is that I’m responsible for what Darquesse did. That I failed to stop her in time. That haunts me. She haunts me. I’ll never be able to forget that.”

“You should just kill yourself.”

“Never!” Omen said, shocked.

“I thought about it,” Valkyrie said quietly. “When it would get too much for me, I’d think about it.”

“I wish you’d done it,” Never said.