White Quartz | Xaden Riorson | S/H

IV

・・・　・・・　・・・

     For a brief moment, my heart beats twice, and silence reigns in the room.
     Then, the olive-shouldered woman huffs out a sigh and turns forward again. "Hardly." Xaden purses his lips, and I find myself staring at it for far too long. "How could you have stood there and let her overhear the conversation of the Assembly?"
     "If you didn't want her to hear, you should've closed the door," Bodhi responds as he takes a few steps into the room.
     "Better yet, don't make an effort to hold it open," I grumble their way, which has her whipping her head back around at me again. "The keep's doors will close on their own."

     They all stare at me for a moment longer and I'm half-tempted to pull out the metal pins holding the door open to let them see it work. But I don't, if only because my entire body still feels sore, and those pins are the size of me.
     "She can't be trusted," Suri rattles with an angry sway of her head.
     "Xaden has already taken responsibility for her," Imogen announces as she comes up by my side. "As brutal of a custom as it may be."

     "I still don't understand that particular decision," Ferris rumbles from between saggy cheeks.
     "That particular decision was very simple," Xaden answers as his arms cross over his chest. His eyes catch on me, pulling me to look at him like he always does. There's a fire in there, flashing gold at me with such intensity, I almost believe him. "She's worth a dozen of me. And I'm not talking about her signet." He looks away, his gaze tearing from mine in a painful display before he levies a harsh glare at the council. "I would've told her everything discussed here anyway, so an open door is a moot point."

     "We cannot trust her," the barbed-wired woman growls as she jumps up from her seat. "Do not mistake your myths as loyalties. She is not the woman you believe her to be, Riorson."
     "We've believed in fairytales once before, why not now?" Brennan defends.
     "Because that fairytale is real! Where are the tomes that spell her allegiance? Where are her six years of loyalty?"

     Bodhi steps forward and opens his mouth but I put a hand in front of his chest and he stops. His defense of me isn't going to do anything but make them distrust him, too. I know how these kinds of people work. A group of untrusting, untrustworthy bastards.
     "She should be confined," Suri announces as she lays her arms on the table. She glances over at me once, her eyes instantly narrowing at my own. "She can ruin us all with what she knows."
     "I agree. She's too dangerous to not keep prisoner," Ferris announces as he tosses a hand out in my direction.

     My hands hang at my side, unstrained but ready to reach for a weapon at any moment. I don't have my glaive but I do have plenty of knives still tucked into sheaths across my clothes. As nice as Tyrrish cells are, I have no consideration for spending any amount of time in one.

     Brennan sighs and walks straight up to the table, dropping his hands to its smooth surface. "Knowing she's bonded to Tairn, whose bonds get deeper with each rider and whose previous bond was so strong that Naolin's death nearly killed him? Knowing we fear he'll die if she does now? That because of that, Riorson's life is tied to hers?"
     He nods toward Xaden but I sneer a lip. I can't fully tell if it's a strategic move to talk about me like a pin cushion on Xaden's wrist or if he's really reduced me to such in his mind. We were never close. He was always too caught up in his mother's training.