𝐒𝐀𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 || Severus Snape x OC ||

19. TO SUMMON & TO TAME

She didn't know if it was the darkness in his voice when his chest vibrated with the promise that he'd help her, or the pointy tip of an arrow that pierced through her with such force and hung her from his parted lips. The lips she felt would become her salvation and her demise. The lips she was dying to feel again. For Severus needed no spell, no incantation, and no mystical arts to enthrall and captivate her. His dark eyes glancing down at her, so closed off, so untouchable, yet bleeding emotions deep beneath their onyx haze. A man of solitary confinement, a man who had learnt never to open up, never to let down his guard and his defenses.

The beating drum within her chest pounded for him, as her heart took to a dance that grew stronger, more powerful, the more he looked at her. He awoke all things wild and feral and untamed within her, within her body that craved what she had never felt before. Things she dared not confess as he stood before her in the cold, dim-lit dungeon and the flickering candlelight kisses and caressed his prominent features, the curve of his lips, his hooded eyes, and his hooked nose.

For now, all she could do was to hold on to the tip of that arrow that had pierced through her and stop it from hooking into her heart and bleeding it. What bound her to him was not the feeling that she owed him for trying to help her, for becoming more than just a professor to her. What bound her heart to his chest, to his dark eyes, was rooted far deeper than owing him. It was instinctive, soul-binding, feral, and inexplicable to her, but it was there, and she could deny no more what her body already knew. And as she paced away from the dungeon, and turned to glance one last time at him, her hand upon the door, her eyes burning, her lips and cheeks flushed up to her temples, Severus hoisted his dark pools to hers. Heat coiled in her stomach, against the hammering of her heart, and the pulsing blood in her veins.

She felt the hooked end of the arrow sink into her flesh, pulling her towards him, and she bit her bottom lip harshly to will herself to leave, to behave. She fought to ascend the stairs away from the dungeon, against the roaring of her whole body. Against the lingering wish to stay, to remain around him, to be within his orbit and magnetic pull.

*.·:·.☽ ✧ ☾.·:·.*

Severus kept his promise. With the first light of dawn, he brought her back to the Forbidden Forest. The awaking nature around them reveling at the first rays of sun against the snug embrace of fog that stood around the trunks of trees like a well-trained dog, never leaving their side.

He glanced at her. The little vial with her blood, snug in the pocket of his frock coat. She hadn't asked why for he wanted it. She hadn't questioned his thoughts when she watched him shove it in the depths of his pocket. And he was glad she hadn't, for the little token of her life's essence had a purpose to serve. Not now, not yet...but soon.

The gentle breeze of the woods blew her locks like a caress as she stood a few meters ahead of him. The flyaway thought of her proximity in his dungeon lingering still; her pleading eyes, his heart pounding harder beneath the confinement of his coat, and the harsh line between his brows deepening. Time was against her, and each passing day brought her a step closer to a fate he was bound to see go through.

Help me, she had asked, and her soft voice clawed his heart. I will, he had promised and bestowed his own trust upon her, that she'd keep their pact a secret. For if it were to reach the Dark Lord's ears, it'd be death for them both, long before the right time had come. Severus, better than most, knew there are times when it's not a matter of surviving the war; but a matter of choosing the right time to die...

His hand clenched his wand. His onyx eyes watching her as she stood beneath the shadowing embrace of the Forbidden Forest's trees. This is the realm of her soul; the woods. This is where he brought her once more, not to see through her mind, not to find what she held hidden deep within, but to arm her, teach her, and shield her. To bring out what lay beneath the soft exterior, to forge the raw into the tamed, to summon the feral and break it to her will.