CHAPTER 420: I CAN HELP YOU-I

Morpheus was not a figment. Arabella’s eyes tracked the man’s feet: a polished boot planted on the splintered floor, crushing the debris beneath as if the ground itself were merely scenery. His face looked the same as ever— pale, composed— and despite the loss of some of his strongest men, an almost pleased smile hovered at his lips. Not triumph, exactly; something quieter and colder: delight.

"A talk?" she snapped, raising her guarded hand. "I don’t need to talk to you."

"Even if it could endanger that man?" Morpheus’s mouth barely twitched when he said the words, but his tone was casual, like a man remarking on the weather. The rest of his face remained serenely unreadable.

Cassius. The name hit Arabella like a stone. Her fists clenched until her nails dug crescents into her palms. What could possibly put him at risk?

She could not dismiss Morpheus as a liar or a devil who delighted in other people’s suffering. He did not make hollow threats. If there was a chance Cassius was in danger, she could not squander it. So she let her glare do the talking and began to weave, slow and deliberate, a counter-curse under her palms— a tight, humming knot of cold air and sharpened intent that bristled with threat.

Morpheus noticed. He smiled wider, unbothered. He drifted to a shattered chair, dragged it across the floor, and sat with his legs crossed. The collapsed form of Wendy had been crushed beneath him; the blood and straw made a dark carpet beneath his boots, and yet he seemed entirely unconcerned.

"I didn’t want to make this more troublesome than it needed to be," he said, watching her with an almost fond irritation as his gaze flicked to the cuts that streaked her arms and face.

"Troublesome?" Arabella echoed, incredulous. "Killing me is ’troublesome’ to you?"

"A pity, more than trouble," he corrected, reaching out as if to touch her cheek. She slapped the offered hand away. He drew it back, unfazed. "I did not wish you dead, Arabella. But to coax you into your... true potential, sometimes one must apply pressure."

"True potential?" she repeated, hard as a promise. "True potential after I die?"

He sighed, as if explaining a nuance to someone obtuse. "He never told you everything, did he? He failed to mention you have only four chances of dying, and you are on your last." The words dropped like a blade. He tilted his head, as if considering whether that should comfort or alarm her. "Is he afraid of losing you? Or does he love the sight of you stumbling through the dark, blind and obedient?"

Anger flared hot and bitter. "Stop sullying his name," Arabella snapped. "No one tells the ones they love that they are to be sentenced to final death as if it were a bedside tale."

She didn’t know what Cassius had hid but that didn’t mean that she was going to accept Morpheus’s tryst on putting rift between her and Cassius.

She would just have to ask him for the truth later. Not now, but later. For now, she trusts him.

Morpheus only smiled the narrower smile of someone with nothing left to lose. "People lie to protect. People lie to control. Your Cassius chose the kind of lie that keeps you small and safe. Tell me, Arabella— do you prefer that kind of love? Or would you rather stand and burn bright, and risk being lost?"

The hall seemed to contract around them: his words, the smell of dust and old blood, the steady drip from her own wound. Arabella felt the curse under her palms pulse, answering her like a caged thing.

"And have you said any truth?" Arabella snapped before grinning, "We all know that you love to lie. Now you have given me a perfect reason not to trust you, just as you say that people lie to control. That you lie to control. How unfortunate that both me and Ariel wouldn’t trust your lies and fall for your attempt of controlling us."

Morpheus’s lips turned thinned, pressed tightly, "You really don’t speak as sweetly as you look." His words sounded as though he was scolding her, as if he had the right to do so which irked her. "Even though you have the quality, you choose to be someone so mean and small hearted."

"I don’t think you understand," Arabella replied with a grin, "I have always been like this. If you can’t handle a few words from me, then you should stop trying to bring me to your side."

"That’s impossible. I am fated to be with you," Morpheus cut off, "Cassius? Him? He is nothing to you, not your fated one. After all his time is running out. Once you marry me-"

"Running out? What do you mean by that?" Arabella’s face slipped from panic to anger, her expression clear as she couldn’t accept the idea of losing her beloved.

"As it sounds," Morpheus chuckled, "Do you know that your constitution is far different from others? The person who you love with your body," trailed Morpheus, "Was fated to lose their life sooner or later. The demon inside your body, the one your mother had chosen to protect you, it isn’t as kind as it seems you see. It has a bad habit, bad habit of taking its repayment by stealing the life force of the host’s mate."

"You are making no sense!" She snapped, "I wasn’t the one who had made the contract!"

"But your mother agreed to it. She believes that no mater what the person who you choose to stay with for the rest of your life would agree on giving up his life for you," Morpheus then leaned backward and hummed, "It shouldn’t be enough to kill him yet but," he drawled, "But that demon must be so hungry and has been waiting to feast on him. I suppose it had forced him to make a promise and once he failed to fulfill the promise, he’s going to lose his life."