To His Hell and Back-Chapter 517: Face That Don’t Belong-II

Esme took a single step backward. Then another. Her forced smile twitched, faltered, and finally cracked as she seemed to recognize, far too late, that remaining in Arabella’s presence any longer would only worsen the nightmare she had invited upon herself.

And so she turned as if she had just seen a ghost coming after her.

She practically bolted out of the place, her cloak snapping behind her like a creature fleeing for its life. Her hurried footsteps echoed down the corridor, as if the faster she ran, her biggest fear wouldn’t come into existence.

Arabella watched her without moving, without speaking. She simply stared after Esme as she ran— as if the sight itself confirmed something she had long suspected.

When Esme finally vanished around the far corner, the silence that settled was sharp and cold.

Isaac was the first to break it. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"What was that?" he asked, eyes wide as he looked between Arabella and the corridor Esme had escaped through. "She looked as if she was running from a ghost."

Arabella didn’t answer right away. Instead, she tilted her head slightly, her gaze still lingering on the empty space Esme had disappeared into.

"What do you think is the reason Esme wears a cloak so often?" Arabella finally asked, turning to Isaac with a thoughtful hum.

Isaac blinked, caught off guard, "A reason...? Because she prefers it?" he guessed with a shrug. "She seems like the dramatic type."

Arabella let out a soft chuckle, though nothing about her eyes suggested amusement.

"That could be one reason," she said lightly. "But it isn’t the real one. Not the one she fears people discovering."

Isaac turned fully toward her now, curiosity overtaking confusion.

Arabella’s voice lowered, "I heard whispers, long before she came to the castle," she began. "There was an incident... supposedly she bumped into someone, and in the fall, her cloak slipped. They saw her real face."

Isaac raised his brows. "Her real face... oh. Was she—" he joked without thinking, "ugly before?"

Arabella didn’t smile, not even a twitch.

Instead, she looked ahead with an expression that made Isaac immediately regret the joke.

"Not ugly," she murmured. "But half her face was melted. From birth. A defect, or perhaps a curse— no one really knew."

Isaac’s shoulders stiffened. "Oh." The levity in his voice vanished.

He scratched his chin awkwardly, looking for something appropriate to say and finding nothing.

Arabella continued walking, her steps slow and measured as she moved past him and toward the open garden hall.

"And the face she has now..." Isaac continued cautiously, "that’s Morpheus’s work, isn’t it?"

Arabella’s lips curved, not into a smile but into something sharper, sadder, and knowing.

"Morpheus gave her that face," she said. "But it isn’t hers. It never was. It belongs to someone else. Someone long gone."

Isaac’s eyes widened, "Someone you knew?"

Arabella didn’t respond. Her green eyes flickered with a distant, haunted recognition, as if a memory she had spent years burying finally rose to the surface.

Isaac tried again, softer this time. "Milady... where are we going?"

Arabella stepped into the staircase, the moonlight washing over her features from the window behind them as she made her way to the garden. Instead of answering where they were going, she replied to the first question Isaac had asked.

"Yes, I knew that face." Arabella’s voice softened, almost as though she were speaking to a memory rather than to Isaac. "The person who had that face... I always believed they were a man. Everything about them felt sharp, distant, wrapped in a kind of quiet sorrow. So at first, when I saw Esme, I thought she was merely imitating someone else, or hiding something entirely different. But the more pieces I fit together, the more I realized that perhaps it was me who misunderstood. That person who helped me... perhaps she was a woman from the very beginning. Someone Morpheus knew. Someone whose face he has preserved long after her death, placed on Esme like a mask. As if she had to pretend to be that person despite the fact that she had long died."

Isaac’s brows pinched together. His steps slowed as he tried to make sense of it. "It’s strange," he murmured. "You said the woman who owned that face met you outside the castle of the sorcerers. But nobody has ever spoken of such a face, and trust me, if it had existed within these walls, gossip would’ve torn it apart by now. Two identical faces aren’t exactly something people overlook..."

"Because she was dead," Arabella said quietly, all this time she had wondered where that woman had disappeared and it was now that she finally realized that she did have two mother and the woman having Esme’s face is her second mother.

Her birth mother died.

She couldn’t recall when exactly her birthmother had died but that once violent woman turned kind not long after she had met the woman whose face was now on Esme’s skin.

That woman was a man in her memory due to how androgeneous her face was. She didn’t know when exactly that woman replaced her birth mother but if she was also a sorcerers... she should have the ability to morph her skin into someone else, just like how Morpheus had done to Esme.

"And I think the only reason I stumbled upon her outside the castle was because she had run away from him. From Morpheus."

Isaac blinked, startled. "But deserters don’t survive," he reminded her. "The curse of the castle reaches them no matter how far they flee. It always has. And yet..." His voice trailed off as another piece slid into place. "Morpheus must have... cared for her. Enough to take her face, preserve it, and place it on someone else. Even if she defied him."

Arabella didn’t stop walking, but her steps grew slower, almost contemplative. "Because he can’t forget that face."

"Not only that," Isaac added thoughtfully, rubbing the back of his neck. "Lord Morpheus despises deserters. It’s one of the few things that can truly enrage him. If she ran away, he wouldn’t have been satisfied with just killing her. He would have wanted her erased entirely. body, spirit, memory."

"And yet," Arabella whispered, turning her gaze toward the distant spires of the sorcerers’ castle, "the fact remains... he kept her face. He remembered every line of it. As if forgetting her was the one thing he refused to do."

As they reached the garden, Arabella stopped right a few windows below the throne room.

She can’t see what had occurred inside the room but she has her own way. By raising her hand a folded paper bird float from her finger to the same window of the throne room. Then with her other hand, she had pulled a round hand mirror, placing it between her and Isaac.

Using it, they could see what the paper bird had seen, the fact that they were now looking inside the throne room with Esme who had rushed to the room and Morpheus who was leaning to the side of his arm rest on his throne chair.

He didn’t seem to be sleeping but when Esme had came without a notice, fuming in all sorts of emotions and disturbing him when she wasn’t supposed to, Morpheus was stirred awake and appeared unhappy as he eyed Esme from where he was, narrowing his gaze sharply.

"What is it again, Esme? Hadn’t I warned you not to disturb me for four days? I had even allowed you to do whatever you wanted, even if it involves Arabella or that maid of hers that you hate so vehemently."

"No... not that," Esme closed the door and rushed to the short staircase to the chair where Morpheus had sat on, "Milord... you told me that this face of mine is unique... that no one else has this face apart from me and how you love this face so deeply."

"I did say that," Morpheus confirmed solemnly. When he raised from his chair, he walked and bent one leg, placing one hand under Esme’s chin and for a moment admired that face so dearly. "You are not the brightest, not the fastest, not the strongest, but when I see your face I always ended up giving whatever you wanted, isn’t that right?"

Esme’s eyes glimmered and from her faze she could see how Morpheus was looking at her.... her face.

But was it really her who he was looking at?

Whose tender gaze stared at her so meaningfully?

"Last night hadn’t you asked for Arabella’s power? A power that matches her?" Morpheus released his hands and walked back to his chair, sitting down as though he was the King that belonged to control the world for good as if everything was his to own. "Hadn’t I done that for you? It was an impossible task yet because you asked for it, I did what you want. So what it is that you are worried again now, Esme?"

"This face," Esme held her own face. She should be happy but a feeling of fear and jealous crept into her heart. "Arabella knew this face."