The dressing room was a temporary pod of high-tech luxury dropped into the middle of the dust-choked backstage enclosure. It was pressurized to keep the silt out, smelling of ozone, expensive hairspray, and the faint, metallic tang of the desert air. Banks of vanity mirrors lined the walls, their bulbs dimmed to a warm, amber glow that caught the crimson fire of Rayna’s hair and turned the shadows in the corners into pools of velvet.
On a mannequin in the center of the room sat the "Red Queen."
It was a masterpiece of contradictory engineering. The bodice was structured from oxblood leather, molded to the curves of a ribcage like a rib-vaulted cathedral, yet the sides were open, held together by gossamer-thin filaments of silk that would breathe in the 100-degree heat. The skirt was a
