To His Hell and Back-Chapter 417: I Still See You-II

"So tell me, where is that man of yours?" Wendy purred, the words sliding out like a knife as she licked her lips, tongue flicking over her teeth in a slow, predatory motion. "He must be somewhere in this castle, yes? Yet— despite knowing you’re in danger— he’s nowhere to be seen. Strange. He doesn’t strike me as the sort to hang back just because you asked him to."

Arabella said nothing. The blackness between them only thickened, and Wendy’s curiosity sharpened into amusement. She could sense movement— an awareness of Arabella’s presence shifting like a shadow— but with a shattered ankle and a knee still slick with blood, the motion should have been impossible.

Logic bent and snapped in Wendy’s mind. What was this foolish girl attempting? What clever little trick was she playing now?

Wendy sneered inwardly at the thought and then aloud. "Ah-ha. Of course— if the vampire isn’t here, then there are only two explanations. Either some binding holds his hands so tightly he cannot come, or—" she paused, savoring the suspicion like a taste, "—you put him there. You trapped him yourself so he can’t rush to you."

A faint click of a tongue from Arabella was the only answer, a sound so small Wendy nearly missed it.

The witch took that silence as confession and laughed, soft and cruel. "So I was right! You schemed. You set him up to fail. How clever— or how pitifully foolish. If he were here, he’d have swept in and saved you like the gallant lord you pretend to need. Instead you make yourself a dead weight. How embarrassing."

Wendy’s voice dropped to a whisper full of venom. "Perhaps this will teach you your place."

She waited, sure of herself. The dark would dull to gray in moments; her eyes would adjust, and then she would watch Arabella flail and fail. Confidence loosening, she let her hand slide to the small dagger at her hip. The room smelled of dust and cold metal and the faint sweetness of the witch’s perspiration. Wendy’s fingers closed around the hilt like a promise.

Then, without warning, a single pinpoint of light blinked at the far end of the hall— it was far too small, too dim and too easily missed as it passed by quickly, yet at the same time, the location of the light was cruelly precise.

Wendy’s hand leapt. She threw the blade with the casual cruelty of someone who expected an easy, exposed target. The air sang. There was a wet, fleshy thunk, a sound that should have been of flesh meeting steel.

For a heartbeat she felt the blade find purchase. She imagined Arabella gasping, imagined the skein of her failure.

But the sound that followed was not the sound of human collapse but of some stuffed thing being skewered— cloth ripping, a muffled snarl as if something inanimate had been stabbed and mortally offended.

Wendy’s scoff curdled into a harsher laugh, sharp and dismissive. "So boring," she spat into the dark. "All flash and no cunning. Predictable. Straightforward. You attack like a child— so obvious, so full of flaws. Don’t you understand? If you can’t learn to be unreadable, to be wild and strange and impossible to guess, you will die. Slowly, and foolishly."

Her words dripped contempt, each one a tiny lash. She waited for the expected scramble, the panicked sound of someone caught and failing. But the dark breathed on, and Arabella’s silence remained as steady as a held breath. Wendy’s grin sharpened in the gloom— confident, and convinced she had the upper hand.

"Time to break your other leg now," Wendy crooned, twisting the straw limb of the voodoo doll between her fingers. The dry crunch of straw splitting inside its frame sent a ripple of delight through her chest. Her eyes flicked eagerly to the shadows, searching for Arabella’s response.

Sure enough, she saw her, Arabella, who had been clinging desperately to the wall as though sheer will could keep her standing, suddenly crumpled. Both legs failed her now, her body folding onto the floor with a graceless thud.

"Pathetic," Wendy sighed, her lips curling in a smile that showed too many teeth. "I thought to draw this out, to savor it, but you’ve only proven yourself duller by the moment. Every attack is sloppy, predictable... embarrassing. Don’t blame me for ending this quickly, you’ve failed to amuse me. You’ve failed to even qualify as a witch."

Arabella made no reply. Not a cry, not even a whisper. She lay there in silence, and that silence needled Wendy’s nerves for a heartbeat before she dismissed it. Why care for an opponent so utterly useless?

She chuckled, her voice low. "And they spoke of you as though you’d slain Alice. How laughable. A weakling like you couldn’t kill a serpent, not even a hatchling. It must have been pure luck... or the vampire doing all the work."

The doll twitched in her hand as Wendy, almost lazily, coiled her fingers around its neck. She tightened her grip. A gentle twist, slow and deliberate, until the brittle straw fibers gave way with a sickening crack.

At once, silence swallowed the chamber whole. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

From across the room, Wendy saw Arabella’s body jerk violently, then collapse fully, sprawling motionless across the stone floor. For a moment, the sight filled her with smug triumph. "That’s the foolish end you’ve chosen," she muttered, half to herself. With a flick of her wrist, she prepared to call the flames back to life, eager to illuminate her victory.

But the fire did not return.

Instead, her heart lurched. A single, violent thump pounded against her ribs, too heavy, too sharp. A sheen of sweat broke across her skin almost instantly. Her vision—clear a breath ago—blurred, the world around her trembling like glass about to shatter.

Her ears rang. No—worse. Her ears boomed. The steady, rising pulse of her own heartbeat thundered until it drowned every other sound.

"What... is this?" Wendy rasped, swaying as though the ground itself had tilted beneath her.