To His Hell and Back-Chapter 519: Almost Caught On-I

Esme’s fingers clenched tighter around the fabric of her dress, the delicate cloth wrinkling beneath her grip as resentment churned violently in her chest. The unfairness of it all burned her from the inside.

How could that woman, someone long gone, someone who had abandoned Morpheus, be so deeply admired, so carefully preserved in his memory, when Esme herself had given him everything?

She had served him with unwavering devotion, poured her loyalty, her obedience, her very soul into standing by his side, and yet she was nothing more than a vessel carrying another woman’s face.

Someone else. Someone who left.

Someone who failed him.

The thought made her vision tremble with a deep fury of jealousy, eating her alive.

"She must have been selfish," Esme continued, her voice trembling as anger and jealousy bled together, her green eyes gleaming with poisonous envy. "To abandon you without fulfilling her promise, knowing this was your dream, your ambition that you had worked toward for so long. Someone like that deserved punishment. A lesson." Her lips curled bitterly. "But perhaps it is for the best. Her death is a miracle for you—"

SLAP!

The sound came without warning.

A sharp, echoing slap cut through the chamber.

Esme did not immediately understand what had happened. Her vision blackened for a moment, her ears ringing violently as her body swayed. When her sight finally returned, the first thing she noticed was the floor beneath her, dark stone now stained with scattered droplets of red.

Her blood.

Disoriented, she lifted her head and slowly turned her gaze upward.

Morpheus stood before her, his jaw clenched so tightly it seemed as though his teeth might shatter. The fury etched into his expression was unmistakable. His eyes burned an unnatural red, glowing with barely restrained violence, as though one wrong word would cause everything inside him to erupt.

"Watch your mouth, Esme," he said coldly. "I have treated you better than most. I have tolerated you longer than others. But that does not excuse your insolence, especially not when you dare to speak of things you were never meant to utter."

Esme brought trembling hands to her cheek, the sting still searing across her skin. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision as she turned her face away, humiliation and heartbreak clawing at her chest.

"But..." she whispered weakly, her voice breaking despite herself. "You loved her... didn’t you?"

Morpheus’s brows drew together sharply, his patience thinning to a razor’s edge. "Have I not already warned you?"

"But isn’t she a deserter?" Esme pressed on, desperation overpowering her fear. "A betrayer? You could have reached your dream if it weren’t for her. And yet... you don’t hate her. You can’t forget her." Her voice trembled violently now. "Doesn’t that mean you truly did care for her?"

"I told you to be silent."

Morpheus’s voice cut through the air like a blade.

In an instant, he raised his hand.

Esme’s body was torn from the ground without warning, her feet leaving the floor as she was lifted helplessly into the air. An invisible force wrapped around her throat was merciless, tightening with terrifying precision to kill. Not just a warning but really to kill.

Arabella who had seen her face from the mirror could also tell with conviction how Esme was going to be killed. That Morpheus wasn’t only upset but enraged, even more enraged than all these times when she had threatened his peace.

She gasped, clawing desperately at her neck as her body convulsed midair, her breath stolen by unseen hands.

Below her, Morpheus watched without mercy.

His fury was no longer restrained, it was really an anger that seemed was so ready to kill.

Esme’s body hung suspended in the air, her feet kicking against nothing as the invisible grip around her throat tightened with terrifying intent to kill her.

Her hands clawed desperately at her neck, fingernails scraping against skin as though she could tear away the force strangling her, because there was nothing truly holding to her neck, no hands, no fingers, just an invisible force of power.

Her face flushed rapidly, turning blue from the lack of air, veins standing out as her breaths came in broken, useless gasps. And to her the room seemed to tilt, her vision blurring at the edges as the world began to dim.

Each second stretched endlessly, agony pooling in her chest as panic set in. She had angered him. Truly angered him. But it wasn’t this anger that had scared her, rather the fact that he had gotten so angry, so absolutely furious because she had mocked the woman whose face bear so much resemblance as her.

When she carefully looked down below her, Morpheus stood motionless.

His arm remained raised, fingers slightly curled as if he hadn’t made the decision to truly break the neck as just by tightening so slightly, he knew he could crush her throat with the slightest effort.

"I warned you," he said quietly, his voice low and dangerously calm. "I warned you not to speak of her." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Esme tried to answer, but only a choked sound escaped her throat. Her legs trembled violently as her strength began to fail, terror finally overpowering jealousy. For the first time since she had entered his service, she understood something with devastating clarity.

He would kill her.

And he would not hesitate.

But for a woman... well that was what Esme could not accept.

The air around them trembled, the pressure growing heavier as Morpheus’s grip tightened. A single thought passed through Esme’s fading consciousness, that she had never truly been special, never truly chosen.

She had merely been allowed to stand close because she carried something precious that did not belong to her.

Then, suddenly—

The pressure stopped.

Esme’s body dropped violently to the floor, crashing down as she sucked in air with broken, desperate sobs. She collapsed onto her side, coughing uncontrollably, her hands still clutching her throat as if expecting the force to return at any second.

"Mi... lord." She called and seeing her face, something in Morpheus began to quake.

Morpheus staggered backward.

His raised hand trembled before curling into a fist, his breathing uneven, as though he had just pulled himself back from a precipice. For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then, in a voice hoarse with restraint, he spoke. "Leave."

Esme lifted her head weakly, disbelief and terror warring on her face. "Milord...?"

"Get out," he repeated, more sharply now. "Before I forget why I stopped."

She did not wait for a second command.

Dragging herself up with shaking limbs, Esme fled the chamber, her footsteps uneven and frantic as she disappeared down the corridor. She did not look back. She could not.

And watching everything from the mirror, Arabella slowly closed it.

"Do you think that Esme would really come to our side?"

"I doubt," Arabella said before letting the paper bird to come back to her hand and disintergrate it into nothingness. "It wasn’t my objective to make Esme turn to my side either way. I knew she wouldn’t want to betray Morpheus."

"Even after that?" Isaac questioned with a frown.

"You will be surprised," she answered, "By how deep a person corrupted by love could go. Even if they were not chosen, they will still do anything to make their target of obsession to love them back. No matter what it is."

"Then..."

Arabella smiled when he turned to him, "Since I can go to see Cassius, I should trust him and continue to do what he had asked me to do. To complete the plan..."