I grab the lilac dress from the top and hold it up to the light. “Which one do you want to wear?” I ask Gwyneth as I ruffle through the various layers on the bed.
“I don’t care. The worse I look, the less he is going to want me,” she says, dragging open the cabinet drawer and plucking out a black lacy bra and panties set.
“Don’t wear that,” I advise. “Unless you want to enchant all the Hallows.”
She drops it into the drawer and pulls out a similar set in red as she pales. “There’s nothing normal in here.”
“That looks like something someone in Riding would wear,” I point out. The Red Riding of Strongfair is the town establishment for ladies of the night run by none other than elderly Hood herself. She is a formidable woman who wrestles with wolves for fun. Not to be confused with the girls still young enough to be wandering through the woods alone.
Gwyneth pulls out an emerald green gown and runs her hands down the silky material. “That’s perfect for you,” I say. It will complement her eyes and hair, but she doesn’t want to be complimented. She wants to be ugly. I find a yellow dress with a big hoop skirt. “But if you want him to avert his lecherous gaze, perhaps wear the sunshine dress?”
Her nose wrinkles at the immense amount of material. “I’d be the laughingstock of the realm.”
Holding the emerald dress, she swishes over to the oval mirror, which is set on the wall between the two grand windows.
“I think I’ll go green,” she mutters.
“I’ll go purple,” I say, coming to stand next to her.
A woman’s shadowy face appears in the mirror and scowls at us both. “Say the words,” the woman snaps.
I blink. “What words?”
She huffs. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
The man in the mirror appears in our cracked version. “Why, fair Daisy, you are the fairest of them all.”
The mirror woman side eyes my mirror man. “Who said that? This is my chamber,” she snaps.
“And these are my maidens.”
I glance between the two mirror people like they are playing a game of hot potato. “Chamber tops maidens, and these are surely not the fairest.”
“I don’t like her,” I mutter to Gwyneth. “She’s not got the same positive vibe as our guy.”
The man in the mirror smiles. “You hear that? The maidens prefer my proclamations.”
“They prefer your lies.”
“Slanderous! Thou should return to the Land of Reflection and meditate on the declarations of our kind!”
They have a kind? Land of Reflection? Who knew? “And thou should remember that we speak the truth less thy should dilute our usefulness.”
The woman and the man disappear in a swirling mist. “That was interesting,” Gwyneth mumbles, turning away and laying the dress on the bed. “Perhaps we should bathe and prepare?”
I grab her hand and turn her back to me. “What is the plan?”
Her eyes tighten and she glances around the empty room before dragging me into the bathing chamber and closing the door. She turns a knob on the bath and water spurts from the ceiling. “I have brought powdered Dranton root,” she whispers.
A wicked grin takes over my face as I marvel at my sister and her quick thinking. “You mean to drug Charming?”
“I’ll slip him enough so that he cannot perform and remembers nothing of the sundown.”
I snap my fingers at her cleverness. “Not only can he not perform, his arrogance won’t allow him to admit it, meaning you’ll escape the floof fumble and he can move on to his next Cinders victim.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, let’s tackle this strange bathing experience. After which we can plan where to store the powder.”
