"Valkyrie, this has to stop."
Valkyrie scowled.
"I'm being serious. You need to get up. You can't keep going on like this."
She shoved the rest of the greasy burger into her mouth. Maybe she would get lucky and suffocate. Maybe then they would let her die.
Oily crumbs spilled down her lips and settled on the massive, heaving softness that had become her body.
She didn't even care anymore.
The darkness was welcome when it came.
"Fletcher, I've been having horrible dreams."
Valkyrie's voice echoed through the shadowy room.
Nobody replied.
She sat up in bed, feeling the caress of silken sheets. "Fletch?"
The moonlight shifted as it passed through the skylight and illuminated a heap in the corner, against the wall.
Instantly she was up and running to it.
The weak light of the waning moon washed out the red of blood to a deep black.
Fletcher lay on his back, spine at an unnatural angle. His dead eyes stared accusingly up at her from the shattered ruin of his face.
Your fault, they screamed, you killed me.
Valkyrie tried to back away but the shadows turned sticky and wouldn't let her go. They slid down her throat and wrapped around her vocal cords and she gagged but couldn't scream, couldn't breathe, couldn't –
"Valkyrie! Wake up! For god's sake, you're dreaming!"
Skulduggery's voice broke through her panic. His bony hands, clutching her shoulders, shook her hard. She came back to herself and stopped screaming; took a breath.
"It was all a dream."
Valkyrie blinked hard a few times to clear the tears.
"She's fine," Skulduggery announced to the worried faces at the door. Valkyrie caught a glimpse of Fletcher, Tanith, and Ghastly, huddled just outside the doorframe.
"Take this."
She turned back to Skulduggery. He held out a plastic cup with water and a pill. As Valkyrie tried to reach out to grasp it, she discovered that her hands wouldn't stop shaking. Skulduggery watched her efforts silently, then gently wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into his lap, cradling her body as if she were made of china porcelain. Placing the pill into her mouth, he carefully poured the water between her lips and helped her swallow.
As he leaned over to replace the cup on the night table, the lamplight caught the glint of silver on Valkyrie's finger. The ring. She stared, transfixed by its beauty. Memories started flooding back.
Skulduggery twined hands with her and she saw a matching ring on his finger. A light shock vibrated through Valkyrie, bringing more out from the dusty recesses of her mind. As he tilted her chin up for a kiss, her mind started drifting. She broke away.
"Skulduggery, where's Teya?"
He looked at her.
"Skulduggery?"
"Valkyrie...she's been dead for eight months."
Her mind roiled in confusion. "No…No, you're wrong."
As sleep carried her unwillingly away, Skulduggery's blurred face whispered stories to her.
Valkyrie sat by herself behind the shut wooden doors, alternatively stirring and sipping her martini. Her foot tapped the ground in time to the waltz playing on the other side of the doors.
A gorgeous blonde-haired woman in a light blue dress walked in through a side door.
"You look beautiful," Valkyrie told her.
The woman smiled and hugged her. "You ready to go?"
Valkyrie shrugged and changed the subject. "Is this a wedding? I thought it was; that music sounded familiar. Who's getting married?"
The lady in the blue dress looked miserable suddenly. "It's your wedding."
Valkyrie bobbed her head and shrugged. Oh well. Then she set her drink down on the table and stood up, taking the blonde's arm. "Well, shouldn't we be going then?"
A heavily scarred man poked his head through the door. "Tanith, Val, ready?" They nodded. Tanith. That was the woman's name, then.
The wedding march started up and they stepped through the doors into the aisle. Barefoot underneath her white, flowing dress, Valkyrie slowly strode between the pews of smiling people who looked vaguely familiar.
A sudden thought struck her as she glanced up the row towards the front of the church. "What's his name again? This guy I'm supposed to be marrying?" she whispered. Tanith sobbed quietly at her side, so Valkyrie decided to wing it. She fixed a bright beam to her face and mounted the stairs to stand beside her husband-to-be.
So he was a skeleton. She shrugged again.
His features still radiated love for her, and his hand clasped hers tightly. She met his gaze with a blank smile, and his bony fingers rubbed circles on her knuckles.
As the priest started talking, Valkyrie and her fiancée turned forwards. Soon, the droning of the man's voice and the warmth of the sunlight on her face had Valkyrie dozing off. Then the man was saying something to her that she didn't catch. It sort of sounded like a question, so she nodded ambiguously.
The skeleton took her in his arms and his teeth touched her lips. The crowd applauded, though Valkyrie heard a few sniffles. A rush of tenderness for all of these strange, mismatched people flooded her, and she wiped away a tear.
It seemed that they were about to leave, so Valkyrie turned to look once more at the altar where she had just been married.
A flick of light in the corner of her vision caught her attention.
Her husband said something to her, but she tugged free of his grasp to investigate the light further.
Valkyrie glimpsed the light at the end of a pew. She dived at it, knocking people out of her way.
That pesky light rounded a bend and then finally Valkyrie could see it clearly: it was a little girl, blue-eyed and black-haired, beckoning to her. She knelt, reached out to her.
The whole church fell silent.
"Hello, Teya," Valkyrie whispered.
An arm seized her about the waist and dragged her up and then she was sprawling, shrieking and howling her daughter's name while they dragged her away.
