Then again, she didn’t try to fool herself that her purpose for being in Ebarron’s domain wasn’t going to come at a steep price. Nor without a great deal of risk.
Stealing from an Incubus House, particularly the formidable one she planned to cross tonight, was no easy feat.
Not that the obstinate, arrogant Master of Ebarron had given her any other choice.
Ashayla pushed open the gold-trimmed mahogany door of the ladies’ room on a huff of indignation. Ebarron’s enormous wealth was evident on every silk-covered wall and framed original work of art. It shone in every inch of polished, snow-white marble under her booted feet and in every gleaming fob and fixture, right down to the restrooms of their lavish casino.
The fortune the House had amassed over the centuries was obscene, so what would it hurt them to part with one insignificant item in their treasury?
“Greedy bastard,” Ashayla muttered as she entered the restroom.
Several elegantly dressed women stood at the mirrors primping, while others chatted quietly on tufted velvet chairs and divans in the restroom’s lavish parlor. Most of them were human, with a few Nephilim here and there.
All heads turned as Ashayla stormed in, reeking of spilled champagne and pulsing with combined disgust for her Incubus companion and the one at the helm of Ebarron House.
She didn’t belong here. Nephilim or not, she was an outsider in this opulent place and these women knew it. Could they see that in reality she was a twenty-nine-year-old struggling accountant from Chicago who’d just spent her last five hundred euros merely for the chance to get in the door of this rarefied world?
Could they detect her determination, or the sheer desperation in her plan for being there?
Ashayla stared right back, defiant.
These women and their disapproving, superior gazes didn’t matter. Only one woman’s opinion of her mattered, and that was Ashayla’s grandmother. The aging Nephilim had been Ashayla’s only family since her own mother had died when Ashayla was a child.
Back home in Chicago, now it was Gran who was dying, after more than a hundred years of living in the mortal realm. She probably had no more than mere weeks left, growing more frail and faded with each passing day. The thought put an ache in Ashayla’s chest. It also renewed her resolve to see tonight’s plan through, no matter what.
In all their years together, Gran had never asked anything of her granddaughter. But a few months ago, as the old Nephilim recognized that her time was drawing thinner, she’d become fixated on an heirloom pendant that had fallen out of the family’s hands nearly two decades ago.
That Ashayla’s mother had been the one to lose the pendant—sold it to a local pawn shop without Gran’s knowledge, in fact—only made it harder to bear Gran’s increasing worry over the piece.
Gran wanted the pendant back. She talked of little else lately. She wanted to see it again, to hold it in her hands before she died and know that it was returned to where it belonged.
Against all odds, Ashayla had managed to track the semiprecious gemstone necklace from the pawn shop to a jewelry dealer across the country who later sold it to an antique shop in Canada, who then sold it in a lot of other baubles and trinkets to a private collector. That private collector, she’d eventually discovered, was the House of Ebarron.
Ashayla had thought her search was over. She sent a message through Nephilim channels to the Master of Ebarron, explaining the situation, but her request to buy the pendant back was denied. She sent another, better offer. Another refusal.
She tried again and again over the past five months, but each time, her request was denied. According to the responses from Sorin Ebarron, he was in the business of collecting items of value and interest, not trading them. As he’d so succinctly stated in his final written reply, treasure won by the House of Ebarron was never surrendered.
Ashayla probably shouldn’t have sent her final message, but the arrogance and disregard of Ebarron’s Master had pissed her off like nothing ever had in her life.
How dare he refuse a dying woman’s request? What kind of cold-hearted bastard was the Master of Ebarron?
Really, he’d left her no alternative.
Gran would have that pendant in her hands before she took her last breath, no matter what Ashayla had to risk to get it back. Nothing—and no one—was going to stop her.
Determination steeling her, Ashayla strode to one of the polished marble and gold-fitted sinks to wash the alcohol off her hands and clothing. Her reflection gazed back at her, mouth grim with resolve, cobalt blue eyes unflinching. Not that she wasn’t nervous too.
She was undertaking an enormous risk, plotting to steal from Ebarron’s famed treasury.