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The Bentley was still running.
Valkyrie wasn’t sure how. Half the windscreen had fractured into a spiderweb of cracks and one headlight flickered weakly against the dark. And yet the engine purred stubbornly, the radio cycling through dead channels on its own, hunting for a signal.
The sky above Dublin had peeled open like paper set alight from behind. Light bled through in jagged veins. Buildings leaned at impossible angles. The air tasted metallic.
Valkyrie pressed a hand harder against her side.
It didn’t help.
Blood slid between her fingers anyway, warm and steady, dripping onto the pavement beneath her boots. Each breath felt like inhaling broken glass. One of her arms hung wrong. She ignored it.
“Ah,” Skulduggery said beside her, voice thoughtful. “That’s inconvenient.”
She didn’t look at him. “Don’t.”
“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” he continued calmly, “and suggest you appear to have broken something.”
She turned to deliver something cutting. Something dismissive.
The words dissolved.
His coat had been burned through at the shoulder. One sleeve hung in tatters. Cracks splintered across the bone of his ribs where something vast had struck him. Valkyrie could see his aura, bleeding faintly from the cracks in his ribs, dissipating uselessly into the dying air. He stood with unnatural stillness anyway.
They had lost.
Not narrowly.
Completely.
“Your hat’s missing,” she pointed out.
“I’m devastatingly aware.”
“I don’t like it when your hat’s missing.”
“I don’t like it when your bones are misaligned,” he replied smoothly. “And yet here we are.”
Another tremor rolled through the street. Somewhere behind them, stone collapsed in on itself with a distant roar.
“It makes you look unprepared,” she insisted faintly.
“I am catastrophically prepared.”
Another crack split the sky overhead. Light flared, swallowing the edge of the river.
She looked at him again, properly this time. “You look wrong without it.”
“I look wrong regardless,” he said mildly. “The hat simply distracts from that fact.”
“It makes you taller.”
“I am taller.”
“It makes you look taller.”
He paused. “I shall accept that as admiration.”
“It’s absolutely not.”
A distant impact erased three city blocks. The shockwave rolled toward them, hot and violent.
He didn’t step away from her.
Neither did she.
The Bentley’s radio stopped on a lingering signal, as if the universe had one more cruel joke to tell as the static crackled and a familiar, lilting melody drifted into the wreckage.
Valkyrie let out a weak, incredulous breath that dissolved into a cough.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I assure you,” Skulduggery said, tilting his skull toward the car, “I did not arrange this.”
“I would certainly hope not,” she replied hoarsely. “I’d like to think you’d have planned the apocalypse where we win.”
The song warbled slightly through damaged speakers, but it held.
We’ll meet again… don’t know where, don’t know when…
Another tremor split the road between them and the river. The sky pulsed brighter.
Valkyrie swayed.
His hand was at her elbow before she hit the ground.
“Easy,” he murmured.
“I’m fine.”
“You are actively bleeding out.”
“As opposed to passively bleeding out?” She tried to wave his concern off, but her arm only jerked weakly, never rising past her elbow.
Valkyrie’s knees buckled with pain, and he caught her fully this time, one arm cradling her back. She felt how unstable he was through the contact, the faint shudder in his frame, the way his balance compensated half a second too slowly.
“You’re worse,” she said quietly.
“I am skeletal,” he replied. “My condition is permanent.”
She almost smiled.
The song continued, absurdly gentle against the sound of the world tearing itself apart.
His hand lingered at her waist.
She looked at him as ash fell like pale snow.
Don’t know where, don’t know when…
He drew her upright with slow care, adjusting for her injured side, guiding her into something that resembled a proper hold. One of her hands rested against his shoulder; the other he held lightly, mindful of the blood slicking her fingers.
They began to move.
It was not good dancing, not like anything they had shared at past requiem balls. It involved too much limping and not enough dignity.
They swayed beside the Bentley as the horizon folded inward.
Her head tipped forward, resting against his chest. She could hear the faint, hollow echo inside him and the rattle of damage he would never admit to.
“You’re stepping on my foot,” she muttered.
“You have three functioning limbs. I’m compensating.”
“That’s not how compensating works.”
We’ll meet again…
He guided her through a careful turn. Slower now. As if prolonging it mattered.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She didn’t ask what for.
“I should have prevented this,” he continued, knowing he didn’t need to.
“You don’t control everything.”
“I generally do.”
“Not this.”
His voice lowered, stripped of his usual polish. “I should have found a way.”
She shook her head faintly. “Don’t.”
“Valkyrie—”
“Don’t apologise for my life,” she said. “Or for how it ends.”
Her hand pressed weakly against his chest, and she felt the cracked bone underneath.
“You could have left. At any point. You didn’t.”
His skull tilted slightly, studying her.
“I found,” he said carefully, “that I did not wish to.”
We’ll meet again…
The world groaned. The river evaporated in a rising column of light. The heat pressed closer.
“Thank you,” Valkyrie said quietly.
He looked down at her.
“I believe,” he said softly, “that knowing you has been… unexpectedly rewarding.”
She pulled back slightly. “Unexpectedly?”
“I had very low expectations.”
“That’s not romantic.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
Another tremor rolled through the city. He tightened his hold automatically, pulling her closer as the ground shifted.
“What a pair of optimists we are,” he said lightly.
She huffed a weak breath. “You are the least optimistic person I’ve ever met.”
“Optimism,” he replied, adjusting his grip minutely to ease the strain on her side, “is a discipline.”
The song drifted around them, fragile and ridiculous.
Don’t know where, don’t know when…
“If we had more time,” she began.
He tilted his head. “We demonstrably do not.”
“Stop interrupting my emotional vulnerability.”
“My apologies.”
“If we had more time,” she tried again, “I think I would have stayed. Properly. I would have stopped pretending this was just partnership. Skulduggery, I—"
Light swallowed the street in a single, soundless detonation.
His hand crushed tighter at her waist.
And the world vanished before the words even had a chance to exist.
Some sunny day…