The woman then reached out her arm for the robe. Mina looked around, frowning. The whole team of five watched expectantly, again with no patience for her modesty. Reluctantly, she shrugged the robe off her shoulders, leaving herself exposed before them, this time topless in nothing but the thong.
The woman crouched in front of Mina with a creamy liquid gold piece of fabric that put a warm glow into the bright room.
As was clearly expected of her, Mina stepped inside its circle.
The woman pulled the garment up over Mina’s hips to cover her body.
The fabric was as thin as the thong and softer than a rose petal. It whispered against her skin as the woman fastened the clasp behind her neck. The cut was a very deep halter and the fabric an exquisite silk, clearly of the highest quality. The design was simple, as elegant as it was revealing. It was virtually backless and fit snugly around her hips and rear before falling gracefully to pool around her feet.
Mina squeaked when the woman’s hand darted under the dress to place a small adhesive cone over one nipple. Ignoring her, the woman repeated the process on the other breast and then stepped back to look at her handiwork.
A fierce and prideful light had appeared in the woman’s eyes. Roz gave a satisfied nod, and Mina knew that whatever their goal had been, they had achieved it.
“Shoes!” Roz barked.
The girl in black ran over with a pair of elegant pumps in the same gold color as the dress. The heels were three inches, if they were anything, and Mina had never worn anything over an inch and a half.
She sighed. Ofcoursethere would be heels. She had never quite mastered the balance and the shifting of weight required to walk in heels with any grace. Walking around in these would be a nightmare. But as she wrapped her fingers around their bright red soles and slid her foot inside she was surprised to find them comfortable.
Roz said, “Turn around.”
Mina did as she was told, and gasped when she saw the creature that stared at her from the full-length mirror that had been dug up from somewhere.
The woman in the mirror was not Dr. Amina Aldaba, only daughter of Ajit and Elke Aldaba.Thatwoman wore a severe braid and boxy suits.
The woman in the mirror was an art deco goddess in a perfectly fitted dress of luminous golden silk. Her skin gleamed a warm brown, as if it had been buffed and polished like a pearl, and her hair exploded around her head and shoulders like a starburst of bouncy hydrated curls, every one defined, their dimension magnified by gorgeous highlights.
She looked like the kind of girl who danced all night and slept through lectures, rather than the sort of girl who had not gone to a single social event during the entire course of her university studies.
She looked confident and...and busty. Very, very busty.
The low cut of the dress and its snugness around the hips highlighted her figure, rather than hid it, and she fleetingly wondered what King Zayn would think. It was indeed a change from her suit.
When she finally spoke, her voice was a thin croak, pathetic even to her ears. “I’m stunning.”
“Of course you are, dear. Would you expect anything less of my grand finale?”
Mina laughed, her eyes glistening, though she would never let a tear fall and mess up her makeup. “Certainly not, Roz,” she said.
Roz’s team started packing up their tools, and Mina tore her gaze away from a mirror to check the time. The whole process had taken the bulk of the day, but there were still two hours until the ball began.
She tottered over to the chair that sat near the window, overlooking the sea. Her current novel sat on a table beside it. Her thought was that she would not muss herself if she just sat and read, but Roz barked at her even as she began to bend.
“Stop! No sitting. Practice walking instead. We haven’t much time to get you proficient. You might look the part, but it will all be for nothing if you fall flat on your face when it is time to take your mask off.”
Roz deserved an award for her way with words, but Mina only snorted.
The whole team guided her in practice for an hour and twenty minutes, and then retouched everything.
Five minutes before their departure, Roz cleared her throat and the entire room stopped.
“It is time for the mask.”
The girl in black and the one with the asymmetric haircut scurried out of the room, while the woman with the perfect face clapped her hands together and the bald man smiled.
Mina’s stomach sank. The mask. She would wear it until midnight, at which point she would remove it and reveal to Cyrano their sham of a queen. Roz and her team could make her look the part all they wanted, but she would never truly be the stuff of queens.
The two women came back into the room, carefully carrying what looked like a small sun.