CHAPTER 421: I CAN HELP YOU-II

She replayed the word in her head like something that scraped the inside of her skull: promise.A promise with the demon inside her? Or had the demon—while wearing Cassius’s shape—forced him to swear something to it?

The idea curdled her stomach. Cassius was not a man to make frivolous bargains, but demons delighted in disguise and deceit. If the demon had traded places with her, could Cassius have thought he was bargaining with her and not the thing that wore her face?

Life force. Promises. Trickery. Arabella’s mind raced through a dozen ghastly possibilities. Demons lied, inverted meaning, and turned vows into nooses. Even the thought of Cassius bound by some infernal pledge felt like acid in her veins.

Morpheus watched her with a patience that was almost tender. He extended his hand as if sowing seed on dead soil— smooth, confident, impossibly calm. "I can help you," he said. "If you wish. I would not waste my courtesy on a vampire, but if you will bind yourself to me in marriage, I will overlook this promise. I will permit him to break it— unharmed."

The words landed like a thrown stone.

"You’re mad," Arabella spat through clenched teeth. Rage flared hot behind her green eyes. "You’d trade a man’s life for a ring? You use his life as bargaining coin?" Her voice shook. Every syllable tasted of contempt. "Why would you want me? Circe has returned— you love her so why me?"

Outside, the rain stitched itself against the ruined window, a cold percussion that threaded through the hall; branches rasped like fingers over the glass. Morpheus’s expression did not darken. His silver lashes lowered as he regarded her, bored rather than affronted.

"I do not love Circe," he murmured, the words soft and precise. "Worship? Perhaps. Love? Never." He folded his fingers together, palms open as though showing her the terms of a contract. "You are different, Arabella. Useful, a perfect person made for me. A match who would lift me higher than I stand now. I want an ally, not a shrine."

Arabella’s heart consumed by the fire she felt burning in the pit of her stomach. She refuses the idea. Refuses the idea of losing Cassius, of seeing him suffer, but also refuses the idea of being married to Morpheus, the man who smells as though he was going to end the world sooner or later. Once he reached the highest position he had mentioned, what he would do then?

But does that mean she was willing to lose Cassius?

If she was forced to choose between saving the world or Cassius... the answer was simple.

She would never wish for the world to end, to see innocents die but at the same time, it was impossible to simply stand back while seeing Cassius dies in her arm.

Impossible. Just far too impossible to ask.

"You seem to be in trouble of choosing," sighed Morpheus as he looked away then feeling an odd sensation, his eyes landed on Arabella’s stomach, lingering for a long time before clicking his tongue, "How about watching him for a few more days? He doesn’t show his suffering but I can promise you this in a week’s count you will see him in a state that no one else would ever see him."

Arabella gritted her teeth and snapped at him, "Do you think if I marry you, I will help you oh so willingly?"

"You won’t," answered Morpheus, "But that doesn’t matter to me. I don’t want you as a person but your body, your soul, and your quality is what I needed. If I could I would have rather taken someone more tamed, someone more willing to listen. Unlike you."

"What a terrible match then," Arabella raised her hand, the beam of light piercing through Morpheus’s sight. "If I could, I would marry a corpse than you."

The beam of light engulfed Morpheus at once, leaving nothing but ashes once the beam of light had disappeared.

What was left in front of Arabella was just a piece of torn clothing, causing for her to angrily smash her arm to the floor, countless time, ignoring the blood that had dripped from her fist as she had slammed her hand to the broken shards.

"Damn it," she cursed, "Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!"

Why was it so hard for them to live a simple life?

A demon inside of her?

How could she kill the demon? How could she rip that demon out of her heart? How could she stop this madness and stop losing the person she cares for?

She could not find an answer. Solutions slid away like shadows. Her thoughts knotted into a cold, tight thing, and her eyes snagged on the larger shard buried in the shards of wood and glass. She picked it up, the edge biting her palm, and angled it until the hall’s pallid light cut her face in two.

"What do you want?" she whispered at the reflected version of herself, voice raw. "What will sate you besides Cassius’s life? Mother said you kept me safe—so how is your safety paid for in his ruin?"

The reflection offered no comfort. No wink of malice. It was only her—smooth, motionless, the demon’s presence invisible in that still surface—and the absence of any answer pressed on her like the weight of a tombstone.

Knowing the day she might die had once been a distant, cruel curiosity. Knowing that Cassius might be taken because of her—because of whatever hunger nested inside her skin—was a poison that seared through the marrow of her bones. She could not accept it. She would not let her life become the wick that burned his.

Anger gathered and became action. She raised the shard until the tip kissed the hollow at her wrist. It felt obscene and honest both, a promise to herself and a challenge hurled at the thing inside.

"Then lose this world with me." Her jaw set, she dragged the glass across her skin. Red welled bright and immediate where the edge cut shallow, and the hot sting was a sharp clarity. "If you demand him, then you come too."

Blood beaded and rolled over the curve of her wrist, a slow, defiant script. She stared at the smear—her own life written in red—and dared whatever lived in that silent mirror to answer.