The Price of Gold | tom riddle

Chapter 31 - Blue Blood

New Years-eve:

"Talk to me Star!" Tom's fists banged on her door.

She clicked the lock on her door, opening it. "What do you want to say Tom? Hm?" She stood in front of him. "I knew this was a bad idea from the start, this little engagement scheme. And now I've lost one of my best friends."

"You haven't lost Rosier," he sighed.

"He hasn't spoken to me in a week Tom. A week. He won't respond to my owls." She threw her arms up in the air and walked over to her window.

"Would you please calm down?" He pinched between his eyebrows.

"How did you think this would end? You knew exactly what you were doing."

"I don't know what you mean by that Ostara," he sighed.

"You were set to marry her when she turned eighteen!" Star's voiced echoed out her room and down the corridor.

"It was an arrangement I never fully agreed to!" he snapped, seeming alarmingly more defensive. "There was only talk of it last year when I stayed at the Rosier's."

"Well you didn't exactly object to it either! Did you?" Her eyes were wide - almost bursting out of their sockets.

"No one gave me a choice Ostara!" his voice was loud and quite frankly frightening. "No one asked me if I wanted to accept a thirteen year old as my bride! When you come from nothing and have powerful men from powerful families barking orders at you, you do what they say."

She did not respond. She thought about what he was saying - admitting he came from nothing. His words softened her emotions a little. She exhaled, "Your point furthers my argument. We need to end this charade of an engagement. The Rosier family is powerful, Tom, you said that yourself. If Gwen has gone home to inform her father, we'll both be targets."

"I wasn't as powerful as I am now when Rosier's father made the suggestion of her becoming my wife. But I am not a powerless child anymore, Star. I'll soon be more powerful than all of them. They don't scare me anymore!" He gritted his teeth.

"You're demented if you think you'll ever be more powerful than a family like the Rosier's. We are nothing Tom. You and I come from nothing. And as much as we pretend and perfect our bows and curtsies, we will never be their equals!"

"What don't you understand?!" he screamed. "I don't want to be their equal. I want to be better than them. I will have the entire wizarding world bowing at my feet!"

"I don't want that! Go! Make your own future Tom!" She shooed him with her hands. "I don't understand why I must be apart of your insane plan for world domination?"

"Because I need you Ostara!"

"Why? Do you love me?" The question was outrageous, she was well aware. She was always trying to create chaos, but with chaos came calculation. And this was all apart of her larger plan. "Can you really not imagine your life without me?"

"Of course I don't bloody love you, you dim-witted witch," he hissed. There it was, Ostara thought.

"So if this isn't about your feelings, what's it really about then? You're using me," she squeaked. "Gwen has a more powerful last name than I do. Why wouldn't you want that, hmm?"

"You don't know what you're saying." He dismissed her, rolling his eyes.

"No. You want something that only I can provide you with. What is it?"

"You're being a brat," he spat.

"Is it something to do with my father? His magic? My mother, perhaps?"