Sinful Seduction (Darkest Desire Book 3)

12. Here Comes Trouble

Aurora could feel Severus's eyes on her.

And she knew why.

Salome's scream had been the kind of that made your blood run cold. It pierced the brain and ignited some primeval pathway, commanding ones attention. It made the hair strand straight up on the back of her neck, and Aurora closed her eyes briefly as she thought about her options. It was the loudest most piercing scream Aurora had ever heard. Why couldn't Salome have stayed quiet for five more minutes dammit?! Five more minutes was all it would have taken to have gotten Severus out of the basement and out the house, never to know about Salome's presence.  It  had sounded like a scream of wild panic, of unbridled rage and uncontrolled anger. A scream of hysteria and disbelief, bordering on terror, filled with wrath. It had a raw quality, the realness of a person consumed by a pain that knew no end or limit, too loud in the small space they were in.        

Aurora had been caught red handed. Whatever her intentions might have been regarding the right time for revealing Salome's presence, the cat was out of the bag now, so to speak. There was nothing she could do about it, and Aurora shifted her weight uncomfortably, waiting for the coming onslaught.

She didn't have to wait long.

"Aurora......what was that?" Severus asked, his voice dangerously low, his eyes narrowing as he saw the unease reflected in the blonde woman's blue eyes. He'd recognized the sound. How could he not? Besides the fact that any bumbling idiot with two brain-cells would recognize a scream like that as a wail of terror, he'd been in the company of Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself long enough to know how to both elicit one and recognize the different variations of the screams of agony and cries of pain.  

"Something that doesn't concern you" Aurora replied, finding she could hold his gaze and not flinch away.

Severus was still and calculating, trying to assess the situation. He was a survivor, and that very survival had depended largely on him being able to analyze a situation and making snap decisions based on that assessment. And now, suddenly, he found himself thrown off his footing, uncertain as to what was happening. Looking at the defiant witch before him he had to reassess what he thought he knew about her, because he saw the flinty hardness in her eyes as she said it wasn't any of his business, and it stirred something inside of him he didn't think he'd feel again when it came to the stubborn woman: concern. What was she hiding? Who had screamed like that? Because he knew that those screams could only stem from one source: torture. And the fact that Aurora hadn't seemed scared, afraid, or even the littlest bit concerned when she heard them, implied she knew it's origins. Which also meant she was aware of it's origins, and didn't seem to care. Severus found the need to re-evaluate where he stood as quickly as possible. He had always been a pragmatic man, able to make those decisions other's would linger over or worry about. With the kind of life he had lived, he had had to make some difficult choices, morally ambiguous decisions that others would not be able to reconcile with their conscience, but choices that had to be made nonetheless. And now he found himself wondering if he really knew Aurora as well as he thought he did.

"You will  tell me what's going on, Aurora" Severus warned her, the silent anger he suppressed in his voice more telling than anything else.

"It isn't any of your business, Severus" Aurora replied tersely, trying desperately to come up with some excuse, some way of managing the situation that didn't include revealing Salome's presence to Severus just yet. She needed more time. More time to extract memories from the witch. Time to interrogate her. Time to prepare the potion. Time to come up with a plan. 

"The hell it is" Severus muttered under his breath, feeling his anger flare up and shouldering past Aurora, ignoring her yelp of protest and hearing her come after him as he ignored the passage to his left, which would lead him out of the basement and away from this damned place, and instead choosing the corridor opposite of the one the two of them were currently in, following the trail of lit torches to the door.