CHAPTER 501: TRAPPED LITTLE MOUSE

By the next morning, Arabella stepped into the dining room with Cassius walking a half-step behind her, his presence silent but unmistakably commanding. Though none in the castle yet knew his true identity, the weight of his aura alone made several attendants straighten in their seats. Yet even with Cassius beside her, Arabella felt no peace. not when she had spent the early dawn listening to hushed whispers from the servants’ wing, whispers saying that Morpheus had returned to his quarters fully healed.

Fully healed. Already.

The thought slithered beneath her skin like an unwelcome chill. As much as she despised the idea of meeting him again, their promise demanded she present herself at breakfast, especially now that the second test had ended. And so she walked forward, spine straight, breath steady, even though each step felt like a descent into a familiar nightmare.

Morpheus sat at the end of the long table, his entire body swathed in bandages. his face, his hands, even parts of his neck disappeared beneath thick layers of white cloth. Only his eyes, two dark hollows, stared out at her. He looked less like a man and more like a mummy propped on a throne.

How laughable.

She had heard he was fully healed yet here he was pretending he was still bandaged and wrapped in pain when he wasn’t.

"I heard," he started, his muffled voice make the entire scene too laughable to behold., "that you had a fine rest while I was locked inside the well."

The snide remark didn’t even graze Arabella. She let out a soft, elegant chuckle, the kind that she knew would irritate him. "And it seems," she replied sweetly, "that you still cannot take responsibility for your own actions. Apologizing must be quite the ordeal for someone like you."

"Do I," Morpheus tilted his head, the bandages shifting stiffly, "have anything to apologize for?"

Arabella scoffed under her breath. She lifted her fork and subtly gestured toward Cassius— reminding him of the thing he had done which he now pretended to forget.

Morpheus blinked, as if only now remembering. He drew his brows together beneath the layers of cloth, then chuckled. "That maid was just stabbed a little. Hardly something you couldn’t protect her from." He paused, letting her shimmer in his words without being able to show her anger. "But what about me? I was almost dead, you know. You didn’t even visit me."

Her hand tightened around the fork until her knuckles whitened. A retort hovered at the edge of her tongue but through the corner of her eye she saw Cassius watching her, silently reminding her of who she needed to be right now.

She inhaled once and then exhaled, replacing her once taut face out of anger into smile.

"I’ll be sure to remember that," she answered submissively.

"You will," Morpheus replied with a pleased hum, as if she had given him exactly the reaction he wanted. "Since there is only one test left, you may as well choose a dress for our wedding. The day should fall within the next two weeks— hopefully."

Arabella felt her lips twitch in wary almost at once.

"So early?" she asked, pretending to not be bothered when her heart had raced from the news.

"We have to," Morpheus answered. "The blood moon is only two weeks away, and that is the perfect time for our ritual."

He stiffened, ever so slightly, when he noticed Esme standing in the corner, frowning deeply as though signaling him to stop talking. Clearly, she had hoped Morpheus wouldn’t reveal anything unnecessary. Anything that might give Arabella more to question.

But it was too late.

Morpheus quickly plastered on a saccharine smile and looked back at her, his bandages pulling awkwardly with the movement. It almost would’ve been comical, if the situation weren’t so suffocatingly real.

"I didn’t know," Arabella said slowly, "that there would be a ritual tied to the blood moon."

"It’s custom for us sorcerers," Morpheus replied with trained ease, "to wed beneath the blood moon. I’m sure you would allow me the honor of upholding that sacred tradition... wouldn’t you?"

The dining room fell quiet, grimly for a moment.

Even bandaged, even barely able to lift a spoon, Morpheus smiled with the confidence of a man who believed everything was already predetermined.

But Arabella’s answer did not come so easily.

"We can talk about it once you manage to see through the third test," Arabella replied, her voice clipped with cold politeness as she pushed her chair back.

"You’re not going to finish eating?" Morpheus asked, his tone a mockery of concern, as though he were the wounded party and she the neglectful one.

"I have eaten enough." Arabella didn’t bother to look back. "I didn’t manage to see you before, so I only came to check on you. Now that I see you are full of vitality"— she paused, letting her gaze flick briefly toward his bandaged form, the absurdity of her words hanging between them —"I feel that I can be at rest and retire."

"I didn’t expect such love from you," Morpheus sang after her, the bandages around his mouth stretching with the movement of an unseen smile. "For coming all this way to see me despite being so angry."

But there was nothing tender in his voice. No trace of a man grateful for mercy or reconciliation. Instead, his words carried the smug warmth of someone who believed he had successfully bent another’s emotions to his will. Someone who savored the idea that he could provoke, manipulate, and still be obeyed.

It wasn’t affection he was praising, it was his unfailing control.

The kind he thought he deserved and the kind he believed she owed him.

Arabella paused only long enough to acknowledge the meaning behind Morpheus’s tone, a tiny stillness with a flicker of contempt in her eyes, before she turned sharply on her heel and strode toward the exit. Her steps echoed across the vaulted chamber, never looking back for once.

Cassius followed a breath behind her but just as he reached the threshold, Morpheus’s voice cut through the room like a hook catching fabric.

"And you. You, the maid."

Cassius halted. Slowly, he turned his head, then his body, meeting Morpheus’s eyes without flinching. The bandages obscured most of Morpheus’s expression, but his stare was studying him.

"Yes, milord." Cassius bowed with flawless meekness, the posture of someone fragile, frightened, and desperately eager to avoid trouble.

It was a lie so perfect it might have fooled a saint and even Morpheus.

Cassius could feel it— the sorcerer’s senses brushing over him like cold fingertips, searching, weighing, sniffing out the slightest inconsistency. Something about him tugged at Morpheus’s instincts.

As if he was looking at something that shouldn’t be here in his precious castle.

"You don’t seem to be struggling," Morpheus murmured, almost lazily. "Even after you’ve been stabbed."

Ah. Of course.

Cassius suppressed the urge to rub his temple. His lack of pain, which has always been his most reliable survival trait, had become an inconvenience. A glaring mistake as any normal human, or even a sorcerer, would still be limping or maybe wince but he wasn’t, not even bothered by it.

He glanced toward the door, where Arabella had vanished moments earlier. And right on cue, he heard her impatiently knocking on the wood, demanding for the door to be opened. She had realized only after leaving that Morpheus had halted Cassius on purpose.

Cassius softened his shoulders, lowered his head, and injected just the right tremble into his voice.

"The lady prepared a potion for me, milord... one that numbs the pain."

A believable lie. Close enough to the truth that it didn’t smell false.

But before Morpheus could respond, another voice cut in,

"What is your father’s name?"

Cassius lifted his gaze to Esme.

She stood rigid and her eyes were burning with vindictive interest. The bandaged Lord might have been the focus of the room, but Esme carried her own kind of danger, the danger of someone who had tasted humiliation and was determined to repay it tenfold. Cassius could see it in the way she glared at him. The memory of being fooled and how she wanted to return to him the shame she had suffered.

She was the reason this interrogation was happening at all. It was she who had whispered into Morpheus’s ear and convinced him that something was "off" about the maid, that a second look was necessary.

And now Cassius realized that this meeting was never about observing Arabella, nor about confirming whether her fractured memories were still safely altered.

No. This was about him.

It was a trap disguised as curiosity or perhaps a test disguised as routine.

"My father died long ago.."

"His name," Esme demanded, "Not whether he’s alive or dead. I need to hear his name. Or perhaps you can’t even remember your own father’s name?"

From her eyes, Esme watched as Cassius was shaking in fear and quirked a grin. This was it. Whoever was pretending as the maid finally realized she was cornered and now was trembling out of fear!

But Esme wants to see it for herself, this creature’s true identity and kill her to show Arabella the pain of humiliation.