To His Hell and Back-Chapter 518: Face That Don’t Belong-III

Something in Morpheus stalled so abruptly it was almost visible, like a mechanism grinding to a halt inside him. The moment Esme’s words settled in the air, that Arabella had already seen the face she wore, his expression froze, the confidence draining from his features as though it had never been there to begin with.

For the briefest second, the man who always appeared untouchable looked exposed, stripped bare by a truth that should never have reached him. Esme, kneeling before him, caught every fragment of that collapse, her breath hitching as she watched his composure crack in real time.

"I– it’s a lie, isn’t it?" Esme asked desperately, her voice trembling despite how hard she tried to steady it. She already knew the answer, or perhaps she feared she did, yet she still asked. Somewhere deep inside, a foolish hope lingered, that Morpheus would deny it, that he would laugh it off, that he would tell her Arabella was delusional.

"Someone else must have had the same face," she rushed on, words tumbling over one another. "You told me this face was unique. You told me no one else could have it, so... she must be lying. Isn’t that right, milord? Of course she is." Her lips curved into a brittle smile as she clung to her reasoning. "She’s always been jealous of me. Jealous that you keep me so close. And now with this four-day test, she must be trying to sabotage it, to make me doubt you, to make you doubt her in return. Yes... that must be it. She wants to ruin everything."

But Morpheus did not respond.

It was as though her voice no longer reached him. His gaze drifted somewhere far beyond the chamber, unfocused, distant, as if his mind had been dragged into a current he could not resist. The words Esme spoke washed over him without leaving a mark, drowned out by thoughts that surged too violently to ignore. A heavy silence filled the space between them, thick enough to suffocate.

"That can’t be..." Morpheus muttered at last, his voice low and strained.

Esme’s face brightened instantly, relief flooding her features. "She was wrong, wasn’t she? I knew it. I knew that—"

"—Arabella couldn’t possibly have seen her face."

The sentence cut cleanly through her.

In that moment, Esme looked as though she had been made of fragile glass, her expression shattering under the weight of his words. Any lingering hope collapsed, leaving behind something raw and horrified. Isaac, watching from the mirror, flinched at the sound of it, but Arabella’s attention sharpened instead, fixated on the careless truth Morpheus had let slip.

"Milord?" Esme whispered weakly, her voice barely holding together. "You said that my face..."

Morpheus exhaled slowly, exhaustion evident in the way his shoulders sank. He looked at her then, not with cruelty, but with a tired finality that hurt far more. "I can’t create a face out of nothing, Esme," he said quietly. "You know that."

The words hung there, heavy and irrevocable, sealing the truth she had been avoiding all along.

"Then whose face is this...?"

Morpheus did not answer immediately. He turned his head away instead, gaze shifting toward the shadows that clung to the far end of the chamber, as though whatever truth lingered there was something he had long since buried and had no desire to exhume again. That single, quiet motion was enough. Esme did not need his words to know.

Morpheus had never cared for faces. He had never lingered on beauty, never shown preference for appearances, and he could barely recall the features of those who served him loyally for years.

Esme had seen it countless times, subordinates dismissed without so much as a second glance, their faces forgotten the moment they stepped out of his sight. That was who he was, cold and purpose driven. He was always unmoved by trivial things.

And yet, her face had always been different.

He remembered it. Always. He looked at it longer than necessary, his gaze tracing it with a stillness that made her chest tighten every time. There were moments when she could feel his eyes on her even before she raised her head, moments when the silence stretched not because he had nothing to say, but because he was looking. Watching. Absorbing.

It had made her feel special, as if she was chosen.

So she wore a cloak out of habit, keeping herself hidden from the rest of the world, loosening it only when she stood before him. She liked knowing that he alone saw her fully, that her face belonged to him and him alone. It felt intimate, like a secret she guarded fiercely, and every time Morpheus fell quiet while studying her features, she mistook it for admiration. Even when his eyes looked distant, unfocused, as though he were staring through her rather than at her, she told herself it was because he admired her that much.

But now—

This face belonged to someone else.

The thought struck her with a violence she had not prepared for. If this face was not hers, then all those stolen moments, all that quiet reverence she had clung to, had never been meant for her at all. The one Morpheus had truly been looking at... the one he had remembered so vividly...

...was the woman who once owned this face.

"Who was she?" Esme asked.

She knew she should not have. She knew better than to question Morpheus, knew how quickly his patience ran out when subordinates dared to pry. He did not owe explanations, and he had made that very clear countless times before. But the ache in her chest drowned out caution. Curiosity, jealousy, and something dangerously close to grief twisted together until she could no longer hold them back.

Someone he couldn’t forget.

Someone who was not her.

Strangely, Morpheus did not snap at her. He did not turn on her with cold reprimand or fury. Instead, his silence lingered for a moment longer, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low, controlled, and threaded with something unreadable.

"Someone who was rebellious," he said at last. "Someone who would do anything to ruin my plans."

The words lingered heavily in the air between them, unfinished, as if there was far more he was choosing not to say. Then he continued, his tone flattening, "You weren’t aware of it, but there was a time when I had nearly succeeded. I had almost reached our goal."

Our plan?

The words struck Arabella sharply as she listened from the mirror, her posture stiffening despite her careful stillness. What plan? The implication that they had failed and was about to make the same plan again made her stomach churn.

"You... did?" Even Esme sounded shaken now, the revelation cutting deeper than she expected.

Morpheus finally turned back, his expression composed once more, the cracks sealed beneath layers of control. But the damage had already been done. Whatever memory he had touched upon had slipped past his guard for just a moment, and in that moment, both women had seen it.

A past failure.

A woman who had stood against him.

And a face he had never been able to let go of.

"I was close to succeeding," Morpheus said, his voice steady yet laced with something dark beneath it. "But she left at the very moment I needed her the most. She told me she could no longer bear what she had been tasked to do, that the weight of it was suffocating her. And so she disappeared from the castle without another word."

His fingers curled slowly at his side, the movement subtle yet restrained, as though he were holding back something far more volatile. "She claimed it was guilt. Claimed she could not continue. But I know the truth. She had simply grown tired of the cage."

Morpheus let out a quiet breath, almost a scoff, though there was no amusement in it. "This castle may be beautiful. Elegant. It may offer power, protection, and purpose—but it is still a birdcage. And not everyone is willing to live their entire life behind gilded bars."

His eyes darkened as he continued, the edge in his tone sharpening. "She had always wanted to venture beyond these walls. To see the world outside the castle. Away from its rules... and away from me."

There was no mistaking his displeasure now. Morpheus was not a man who forgave abandonment. Nor was he someone who discarded things he despised simply because they had once belonged to him. If anything, he clung harder to what had slipped from his grasp, not out of fondness, but possession.

"Eventually," he said quietly, "she vanished. Gone without a single trace."

Esme’s breath hitched. Her hands trembled as she clenched them together, knuckles paling beneath the strain, her lips parting as if she were afraid of the words even as she spoke them. "But... no one can simply leave the castle," she argued weakly. "The curse would devour them. Anyone who tries to escape never survives."

Her voice cracked near the end, desperation seeping through despite her attempt to remain composed. Some fragile part of her still clung to hope—hope that Morpheus had chosen that face out of mere preference, out of fleeting interest, not because it belonged to someone he had truly cared for.

"She sound like a selfish woman," Esme blurted with anger.