“Cuff him,” Skulduggery said. He holstered the gun and picked up his arm, started to thread it through his sleeve.

“I’d almost got to the best line and you … fine.” Stephanie shoved the Sceptre into the bag on her back, walked over and cuffed Rhadaman’s hands tight. She stood as Skulduggery’s arm clicked back into its socket.

“Ouch,” he muttered, then looked at her. “Sorry? You were saying something?”

“I was being cool,” she said.

“I doubt that.”

“I was being really cool and I was quoting from a really cool movie and you totally ruined it for me.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

“No you’re not. You just can’t stand it when other people get to say cool stuff while you’re too busy screaming, can you?”

“He did pull my arm off.”

“Your arms get pulled off all the time. I rarely get to say anything cool, and usually there’s no one else around to hear it anyway.”

“I apologise,” Skulduggery said. “Please, continue.”

“Well, I’m not going to say it now.”

“Why not? It obviously means a lot to you.”

“No. There’s no point. He’s already in shackles. Also, he’s unconscious.”

“It might make you feel better.”

“I’d feel stupid,” said Stephanie. “I can’t say cool things to an unconscious person.”

“This isn’t about him. It’s about you.”

“No. Forget it. You’d just laugh at me.”

“I promise I won’t.”

“Forget it, I said.”

He shrugged. “OK. If you don’t want to finish it, you don’t have to. But it might make you feel better.”

“No.”

“OK then.”

He stood there, looking at her. She glared back, opened her mouth to continue the conversation, but he suddenly turned, walked away, like he’d just remembered that she may look and sound and talk like Valkyrie Cain, but she wasn’t Valkyrie Cain.

And she never would be.

3

THROWING DOWN THE GAUNTLET

oarhaven was a young city – barely more than three weeks old. It had grown from its humble beginnings as a small town beside a dead lake to a wonder of architectural brilliance in the blink of an eye. Constructed in a parallel reality and then shunted into this one, it overlaid the old town seamlessly. Roarhaven’s narrow streets were now wide, its meagre dwellings now lavish. Its border was immense, proclaimed with authority by the protective wall that encircled it, a wall that used tricks and science and magic to shield it from prying, mortal eyes. At the city’s centre was the Sanctuary, a palace by any other name, resplendent with steeples and towers and quite the envy of the magical communities around the world.