Sacred Silence | A Tom Riddle Story

43: A woman is a God.

It was already past curfew, and Shiv knew there was no way she could reach Tom in his common room.
She also knew that he was on prefect duty tonight and was starting his rounds in a couple of minutes, so she decided to let him find her.
She strolled off to the library and purposely let the doors open. She sat down at a table close to the entrance and used her wand to turn on a small light on her table.

She had nothing to do, so she just folded her hands on her lap and stared at them, thoughts racing. The conversation with her father played in her head over and over again, making her question the things she had said.

After about thirty minutes of this, she heard footsteps in the corridor outside of the library. She straightened her back a little, and focused her eyes upon the big open double doors.
A few seconds passed, and then Tom's tall frame came into view. He looked into the library for the source of light, and found found her sitting there.

'Siobhan,' he noted in a monotone voice as he strode over to her. He stopped next to her chair and leaned himself against the table, looking down at her once more.

'Tom,' she replied, pushing back her chair a little, turning towards him. She looked up at him and crossed her legs.

'Why are you here?' He asked looking down at her, but his tone implied that he had put one and two together and knew she was waiting for him.

Shiv shrugged and straightened herself in her chair a little.
'I had to go meet my dad. It was quite the experience,' she said, her eyes darting away from his because of his intense gaze.

Tom crossed his arms in front of his chest and raised his eyebrows a little. 'Anything concerning me?'

She couldn't help but roll her eyes at his narcissism. It was best to tell him everything, though. She had made a choice to shift her loyalty from her family to him even more, directly going against Dorians' orders to tell him about their secret research.
So, she filled him in on most of what had unfolded. She made sure to make it all sound much more as if it was done out of respect for Tom, instead of a desperate last straw to keep her dad from marrying her off.
She left out the part where she had reasoned that Tom had no interest in something like marriage and therefore felt safe.

She wasn't wrong, though, because he seemed utterly repelled by the idea of being forced into some as mundane as marriage and children.
'He could have just written to me, I would've answered honestly,' Tom remarked at the end of her story.

Shiv couldn't help but grin slightly, happy that she had put something together that he hadn't yet.
'Non Ducor, Duco. He doesn't trust you. Thinks you're gaining too much respect and power. He had to go around you,' she explained.

Every single player in this whole game was executing their own strategy. Tom, Dorian, Mr Malfoy, even Abraxas and Shiv. Everyone wanted to get the best deal out of this situation.
The heightened admiration for Tom, her willingness to take his abuse, the kiss on his cheek; they were all part of her own self-preservation.
His weakness was his inability to accept when he couldn't have something, and that was something she could use. She was quite literally using herself as bait.

Tom nodded slowly, as if to say he didn't trust Dorian completely either. It was truly every man for themselves in the end.

'I couldn't let him threaten to marry me off, you have to get that,' she said after a while of studying his focused expression, showing all the calculations and thoughts that were happening behind his calmness.

'No, that won't happen,' he answered in an equally expression tone.

Shiv tried to hide a small, triumphant smile. Her plan was working, even if it was just for now.
After everything that had went down, the way she stood up to her dad and had just leaned a powerful new curse, she was starting to feel stronger than she had in a while. Her family had always been her trigger, the thing that held her back, but she could sense new opportunities arising.