it at me. "I can manifest my own underwear."
"Ohh la la. But it's fun to wear the real stuff once in a while and make him take it off! Give it a try. Then we have shapewear, don't complain." She held up what looked like a corset to me, and a purple satin one with bows, plus a garter belt with matching bows and some silk stockings. "It's a serious ball, and I know some faeries will go the slinky paper-thin dress look, but that is not for you. You are a voluptuous goddess, Jenny, okay?”
Well, I did want to look sexy for once in my life. I had said that. So I just allowed her to truss me in the garment. It really shoved my boobs up with a sort of built-in push-up bra.
"You look amazing!" Daisy said. "You could make men go crazy, even with more of a basic face, and I say that in the best way, because people with basic faces are usually better company.”
"I don't want men to ignore my face and then go crazy!” I couldn’t help but recall how Variel said I had a very nice face, not a ‘basic’ one.
Daisy sighed. "You do have three men who seem wild about you, and you can make them do anything you want."
"I don't want three men wild about me either."
"Are you sure? It's pretty great." She whipped out a gown for me. It had no sleeves at all. At least the skirt was long, brushing the floor when she started fastening the hooks around my waist.
“Doesn’t it get pretty complicated?” I asked.
“Of course it does,” Daisy said. “But you will forget all about that when you’re in the middle of a trio of sexy husbands. And you will also forget it when the baby wakes in the middle of the night twenty times and they all jump on it.”
“That does sound…nice,” I said. “Of course, you’re much more of a fancy sort of person.”
Daisy scoffed. "No reason you shouldn't be something special. Cyrus says you have the sweetest brain he's ever brushed. And I heard you're an amazing pastry chef. If I was a man, I'd sign up, girl, okay?"
"Cyrus brushes brains?"
"He reads thoughts," Daisy said. "Mostly by accident. But he always knows what people are about, and he'll tell the rest of us honestly. Me, Orson and Larkin, I mean. No one else; he's not a blabbermouth… Well, except the queen, of course. He's supposed to help facilitate the trials this evening. And he won't tell me what's going to happen."
"It's sounding so ominous. The queen wouldn't hurt anyone tonight if I told her not to, would she?" I tried to tug up the bodice.
"The queen is very fair," Daisy said. "But...that doesn't always go the way we humans expect..." She lowered my hands again. "That bodice is as high as it's getting."
I clenched my hands. Every time I breathed, my cleavage seemed to put on a show of swelling out of its delicate fabric conveyance.
"They won't pop out," Daisy said.
"They're already popping out!"
"I mean, your girls aren't doing a nip slip. Shoes!" She opened another box. “Wait--the stockings first."
Soon I was standing in front of a long mirror, staring at a stranger's body with my plain old head. The gown and corset hugged my curves and enhanced them in what seemed almost an armor of soft dark velvet that had its own life in the lamplight. The velvet continued in a sheath to my shoes, but then a thinner black skirt streamed out around my hips, brushing the floor behind me. Just a hint of silver buckles peered out on my heeled dance shoes. None of the underthings could be seen, but I certainly felt it all, from the silk stockings to the ridiulously tiny strip of underwear.
As I was staring, Daisy came up behind me and clasped a necklace of deep blue stones set in silver around my neck.
"This look is almost too serious," Daisy said. "But you're going to be a badass lady tonight, okay? Look at me."
"I don't need to be badass," I mumbled. "I just want to be happy."
"You are going to be happy. But you are going to get there by deciding your own fate. Thinking about what you want, and then going for it, and if anybody gets in your way, they better get in line. Have you ever felt that way before?"
"Never!"
"Try to own it. It feels pretty good."
I nodded nervously. She made it sound