I'd expected Courage to be a monster.
That would have been easy. Something huge with teeth, a cliff to jump from, a fire to walk into. I'd spent two years in this world walking into things that wanted to kill me, and the Crown knew it as well as I did. It had better ideas.
The path let me out into a round room made entirely of mirrors. Floor, walls, ceiling. Wherever I looked, there I was, a thousand times over, dwindling away into silver.
Then the reflections stopped copying me.
The first one was a boy.
Fourteen. Thin. Grey-faced, in a grey school jacket, standing very straight with his hands at his sides. I knew him the way you know your own handwriting. He was me before Emma. Before anything.
As I watched, he grew.
