His moment was gone. His chance at being something, at being somebody, had flowed from his grip like a fistful of water. At break time he sat alone, a ghost, fading slowly back into the furniture. It was what he was good at. It was the only thing he was good at. Any hope he’d ever had of being somebody who’d make any kind of difference had disappeared. What a fool he’d been, to think himself part of the team. Skulduggery Pleasant and Valkyrie Cain and … Omen Darkly? Really? Had he seriously thought that? Had he seriously thought that the two of them, that two legends like that, would take him on as an apprentice? What the hell would they need him for? What would anyone need him for?

But it had felt so good. That was the really pathetic part. Being a part of it, however briefly, had filled a need within him that he’d never known existed. Up until now he’d been content to be the irrelevant brother. He hadn’t minded that everything was about Auger, that nothing was about him. It was how he’d been raised. He’d never known any different.

And then Skulduggery and Valkyrie had come along and told him that he could be a part of something bigger, and it was like a light shining down on him from above. He was singled out. He was special. Not once in his fourteen years had he ever been special. Auger was the first-born. Auger was the Chosen One. From the day of his birth, Omen had been the other one. His parents treated him like an annoyance. The people brought in to train Auger treated him like a prop. See what your brother is doing, Auger? That’s the wrong way to do it. Do it like this. Good boy. And Omen was left in the shadows, always so eager to please, always so compliant. Never complaining. Always grateful for whatever scraps of attention, no matter how meagre, were tossed his way.

And, for two glorious days, it had all changed, and he’d glimpsed what it was like to be important. It had been good. It had been … fulfilling. He’d never been happier. The realisation hit him like heartbreak. He had actually never been happier.

Tears came to his eyes again and he wiped them away, roughly, with the back of his hand. Nobody laughed at him, nobody pointed, because nobody saw, and nobody cared. A sea of black uniforms and coloured ties all around him, ebbing and flowing, and not one of them bothered to even mock him.

Skulduggery was worried about putting Omen’s life in danger, but the truth was if Omen had been killed, nobody, apart from Never and Auger, would have cared. He was a ghost in life and he’d be less than a ghost in death.

Did you know that the Chosen One had a brother?