At the Battle School, Ender is now 9 years old.  He is now a toon leader in Petra Arkanian's Phoenix army.  Alai was a toon leader also, and Dink Meeker had finally accepted a position as commander, taking over Rat army when Rose the Nose left.  Ender still holds his evening practice sessions, but now everyone's elite attend them (launchies are still invited, of course).  Ender is still at the top of the standings.  Everything is going well, and yet Ender realizes that he is very unhappy.  He sees other soldiers converse with each other, and sees their comradery, that he doen't have.  Even when he's with Alai and Shen at the evening practices, they make jokes and feel guilty because he's all about business.  And he can't get past the "end of the world" in the fantasy game.

    In order to get Ender on top of his game once more, the leaders of the school get Valentine to write ender a letter (they have previously been deleting all the letters she sent) to try and get ender past his little "plateau."  Graff comes down to get her to do it, and asks her why Ender would see Peter in the mirror at "the end of the world."  She is reluctant to tell him, but she says that ender and peter are opposites; Peter is cruel, Ender is kind.  They figure that Ender feels that he has become an awful person in the battle school, and needs reminding that he's not like Peter.

    She writes the letter, and Ender kows that they made her do it.  He cries tears of anguish (shocking the other soldiers in Phoenix army) and goes to teh fantasy game.  He goes to the end of the world, but instead of killing the snake under the rug like he always had, he kissed it.  To his horror, the snake that he had killed so many times turned into his sister, valentine.  they look in the mirror and see a dragon and unicorn instead of peter.  The mirror fades, and he and Valentine walk from the end of the world arm in arm as a crowd of peters applaud them.  he doesn't notice this, though, he just knows that wherever he goes, Valentine is with him. 

    Valentine privately recieves a medal from the IF the next day.  She feels like she has sold out Ender to them, and in response goes home that night and writes a column about the stupidity of population laws, and how overpopulation could be solved by sending colonies to other worlds rather than forcing each family to only have 2 children.  remembering the taunting name that had been given to Ender by bullies on earth, she says that the most noble title someone could have is Third.

    I loved that part, because it talks about how peter totally misses the point of this statement, thinking she was just trying to be contrary, not that she actually cared.  while ender still dwells on him, Peter has long since forgotten ender.