Behind Gilded Masks

Chapter 9

There are time when Eileen wondered why she let Ayla so easily win these arguments when she shouldn't. Considering how disastrous it had been the last time they had come to these, it was wonder she'd even agreed at all. She had swore she wouldn't let herself be swayed, but under the weight of Ayla's pleading and her own need to find answers, that plan had been thrown off track.

So here she was. At another ball, when she had already established just what an absolutely horrendous idea it was. Except worse, because she knew they now expected more from her. Or well him, if she were considering it from their perspective. In the end it made no difference because it came to same result.

To top it all off, she'd managed to be pulled into an asinine conversation as well. She didn't even know what it was really about at the moment. All Eileen knew was that it had been going on for far too long.

Perhaps she she should have thought about it a little more before agreeing to talk to the Ash couple the last time she was here. But at the time she hadn't thought that she'd ever be back to one of these. It hadn't seemed necessary then.

In the last few days she had found out how naive that thought was. First of all, Ayla had a point when she said it would be suspicious if her date vanished into thin air so soon after his first appearance. It was something that Eileen had considered as well, but she hadn't thought it would be too difficult.

Another point was that it would hardly be a good solution to Ayla's problem if the relationship ended after a night. Her parents wanted to meet the man who'd taken her to the Bennett ball. And Eileen knew them well enough to deduce they'd find it suspicious if she didn't continue doing so.

More important however was the knife. The knife that now sat in a secure box underneath her bed. The one which was sharpened and tipped with poison so thoroughly that it would undoubtedly have been able to kill its target if it hit them. The knife that she still had no idea about.

It had bugged her. When she had sat down in her home, unwinding after the absolute chaos that was their "first date". It had been unsettling to think the assailant was still out there. That with the way the attack had been ignored, there would be no one looking for the assailant's whereabouts.

She knew that with Ayla's family and their relative position in this society, they would undoubtedly keep going to such parties. It made them easy targets. Even if they weren't the would-be assassin's targets, Eileen knew firsthand how messy these situations were. Someone could very easily be caught in the cross-fire.

And she didn't want it to be Ayla.

For many reasons. The most important of which was that she was one of her oldest friends and simply because it was Ayla. Growing up in a ragtag army as she had, she knew there were times that killing was essential. You couldn't fix every problem with a conversation or a drink. Gods knew she would have been bear food is she'd taken that route.

It was more complicated with humans. She knew that there were certainly ways it could be avoided, but it was universal instinct to attack when threatened and think of the consequences later. It was true for wolves and lions, and it was even more so for humans. There would be less wars if the species wasn't so inclined to violence when threatened.

But the lives killed weren't always the guilty. There was every chance that innocent people would be caught in the cross-fire whether you wanted them to or not. So when Ayla had told her about this event, insisted on going to it even after all of Eileen's protests, she'd had little choice but to come with her.

If only she could find whereAylahad wandered off to. When the seconds ticked by and she still couldn't find her. Eileen determined that it was time to cut this conversation short.