Skulduggery Pleasant is like. You're a smart, lonely twelve year old girl. You're mature for your age, everybody tells you that, and you carry that arrogance in your bones that only smart, lonely twelve year old girls know. You're the darling of the family, the child prodigy, the one who's prettier, thinner, smarter, more mature, more charming, more perfect than the rest. You've got everything you need, but you can't shake the feeling that there should be something else, something that fills that void inside you, something that takes away that boredom with the mundane.
You meet a man. He's older than you, and he's known you for so long that he remembers seeing you take your first steps. You don't even remember his first memory of you. He's charming and well-spoken and hard to dislike, and he's irresponsible and he's reckless and self-destructive, and he's like you and you like that. You like him. He lets you tag along at first, more for his own amusement than anything else, and you like that, you like how mature you feel. People tell you what they've always been telling you, you're his darling, the child prodigy, the one who's prettier, thinner, smarter, more mature, more charming, more perfect than the rest, and he makes you feel useful and you like that. You like being useful.
And for a few years it's that. You think you've filled the void. You're his favourite, his partner, his confidante, and he showers you in luxurious gifts and money and adventures, in an effort to make you forget what's happening to you. You're the center of attention. Valkyrie Cain. Your reputation precedes you everywhere you go and you're so caught up in the rush of euphoria that you get from being the best, his best, that you don't even notice the rest of the world passing you by. You're estranged from your peers, your classmates, your own family, you haven't spoken to your old friends in years. You miss your own first kiss, your graduation, your eighteenth birthday party. You fall in love with a boy and break his heart. When he leaves he tells you that you've become just like him, and even though it's an insult, somewhere deep down you're flattered. You push away all the truths they tell you, that you've become bitter, cynical, harsh, that you've been through things with him no girl your age should have experienced, and yet - something is there, creeping in. The void comes back.
You're at the bottom of everything. You've nearly burned down the world because of him. Your parents, your friends, your little sister that you swore to protect, they've all been damaged. You leave and don't call him for five years.
Five years pass by. He rings your doorbell. You let him inside again.