"We didn't know!" Dexter's words burst out of him and he found himself on his feet, reaching out to grip Ghastly's arm. His voice had risen, now, though he tried to keep it quiet. He couldn't tell if he succeeded. He couldn't care enough to figure it out. "How could we have known for sure?! It's not like Descry can read Skulduggery's mind!"

The accusations rang hard in him and he shook his head, looking away into the corner of the shop where he couldn't see any of the others either. It wasn't untrue. There were things they'd done, things they wouldn't have, people they had lost that maybe would have lived if they'd known for sure what had happened to Vile.

But they didn't know for sure. Even with all Descry's talent, they hadn't known for sure. They'd just feared, in the opposite direction to everyone else.

A split second later he was looking back, his hand dropped and tears in his eyes, but vibrating weariness all in him. He spread his hands plaintively. "He came back, Ghastly. It didn't matter any more. He was gone and then he was there and ... what good would us saying something have done? You know how Corrival was under orders to put him down if necessary. Hopeless regretted telling me."

Maybe he wouldn't have. Maybe he'd have kept it all locked up nice and tight in that box of secrets he called a brain, except that Dexter had been on night-watch when the mind-reader couldn't sleep for all the death around him. Except that Dexter had seen him dream. Heard him dream. Tried not to ask. And failed. He should have been stronger. If he hadn't caught Hopeless at such a vulnerable time, maybe he wouldn't have known. He wouldn't have had to know one of his brothers had been an evil on a level, or even greater than, Mevolent himself.

Dexter let his hands fall. The tears in his eyes threatened to fall and now his tone was defeated, a repetition he clung to even now, after all these years. "He came back."