Embellished With Lies

Chapter Seventeen

"What is this place?" Tessa asked and let go of my hand, looking around the giant room that Anastasia, Drizella, Molly, and Lady Tremaine had brought us to. "It's so... scary."

The four women looked between each other with a grin on their faces.

"This is our weaponry," Drizella explained, wiping something off of her rather small shoe. "We store all of our weapons in here."

My sister and I nodded, understanding the concept. As I glanced around, I noticed that there were many weapons that I had only seen in the movies. There were shelves and shelves of guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and stones, knives, ninja-stars, axes, spears, nun-chucks, and many that I didn't know the name of.

"I have another question," I mentioned, rocking back and forth on my heels.

"What is it?" Molly asked, running her left hand through her golden hair. "I hope you're still planning on helping us."

"Oh, no, we're still going to help," I started, looking at her. "If we're not going to, you know, kill Cinderella, why are we going to have all of these weapons? I could be wrong, but..."

"You're right," Anastasia began, smiling at me. "We're not going to purposefully kill the Queen. However, we are going to need to be prepared; there are guards everywhere in the castle. They could sneak up on us at any point and we need to be ready to protect ourselves."

I chuckled, laughing at my oblivion. "I didn't really think about it that way, but now that I have, I guess that it makes sense."

"What else would we use them for?" Lady Tremaine shook her head. "Like we've told you before, we don't believe in killing people if we don't have to."

"I know," I told her.

"Moving on," Drizella continued, clasping both of her hands together. "We need to fit you for weapons, so to speak."

"Fit us for weapons?" Tessa inquired, fidgeting with her bracelet on her wrist. "Like when Emma fit me for dresses before the ball?"

Just the mention of Emma's name made me feel two opposing feelings: one of which that caused me to miss her, and another that caused me to be confused. Was Emma in on Cinderella's evil scheme, or was she just being played by the Queen?

Molly must have read the expression on my face because she replied, "Yes, exactly like when Emma fitted you for ball gowns." She glanced over at me and added, "Emma does not know anything about what Cinderella is doing, Matthew. She'll have no idea what is going to hit her when we execute our plan."

I had a psychological weight lifted off of my shoulders. Knowing that she wasn't involved in the Queen's plans would definitely help me sleep more easily. If, you know, I ended up sleeping at all.

I was being completely messed up. I was still with Caitlyn, but I was constantly thinking about Emma. I couldn't even imagine how I would feel if more girls were thrown into the mix. I felt absolutely awful about questioning my relationship with Caitlyn over just one girl; I don't know how guys in the movies can juggle their feelings for multiple different women at the same time.

"Tessa," Anastasia began, handing her a small pistol. "Hold this, and please, for Pete's sake, please do not pull the trigger."

"It's loaded?" I asked, questioning their sanity if they gave a five year old a loaded gun. Tessa didn't know what in the world that she was doing.

"Yeah." She turned back to my sister. "Does that feel okay in your hand?"

Tessa looked at me before glancing at Anastasia. "I guess. It's just a little heavy."