To His Hell and Back-Chapter 107: Bloodline Cannot Lie

Ariel’s fingers curled tightly into her palms. Fear coiled in her stomach, but she forced herself to meet Morpheus’s gaze, to steady her voice.

"What is it that you want?"

Morpheus sighed, tilting his head as if her question disappointed him. "Such coldness," he murmured, though his smile never wavered. Yet something in his eyes dimmed, returning to its pitch darkness, just slightly, like a candle flickering from a draft.

"I’m here to bring you back."

Ariel’s breath stuck. The words struck her like a prick of a needle, sinking deep into her chest. Back. Back?

She knew what he meant. Back to that place... the castle she had visited as a child, the place where everything had begun to unravel. Where Arabella had nearly drowned.

Unlike her sister, Ariel remembered more than just fragments of their childhood. She remembered their mother’s silence, the way she would sit at the window, staring at nothing, lost in thoughts she never shared. She knew her mother had never loved their father, perhaps she had loved him once, but whatever tenderness had existed had long since withered under the weight of his gambling and debts.

And yet, she stayed. Not out of loyalty and neither was it out of love. Instead, it was as if she believed that, despite everything, he was the safest option. As if leaving him meant stepping into something far worse and something she fears.

She didn’t quite like her mother but she knew that her mother was trying her best to run away and that for their entire life, the sisters needed to escape like she did.

Ariel’s gaze wavered, pulled into the old memories she had buried deep.

She recalled how she had first met Morpheus. How that night there were more than thirty men in black cloaks came.

They had knocked in deep midnights, like a death sentence. She had been young, but even then, she had noticed the way her mother’s expression changed. No surprise. Not confusion. But a raw, shattering fear as if she knew she had been caught and was going to be fed to the burning flame.

A fear so absolute, so frightening that it told Ariel everything she needed to know. Her mother had known them. She had known what they were capable of and she had also known why they had come, knowing well that she had owed them something she couldn’t afford to pay back.

Her mother feared them but it seemed she didn’t have a choice but to walk and follow the men to enter a carriage and after a long ride they stopped at the castle. Not the details were much etched on her memories but she knew that once seeing Arabella Morpheus was displeased. He then argued with her mother, saying a few words that she couldn’t understand. Not because she was too young to comprehend it but because they had spoken in an odd language that she couldn’t tell yet she could understand it at the same time.

Then, without warning, two guards in black cloaks wrenched little Arabella from her grasp. Ariel barely had time to scream before they shoved her sister’s head beneath the water, the lake swallowing her small body in an instant.

Arabella thrashed, her tiny hands clawing at the surface. Bubbles rose, bursting in frantic, soundless pleas. Ariel had screamed for help, her voice raw with terror— she begged for the adults to stop drowning her sister down in the lake and they didn’t heed to it until suddenly a sharp crack split the air.

Her mother’s palm met Morpheus’s cheek in a rough slap, the force of it ringing like an arrow in the quiet, silencing every single note of noise that had earlier filled the castle’s front. A cut appeared from Morpheus’s cheeks, and a line of red appeared on his pale cheek but Morpheus barely reacted. He stood still, the imprint of her hand marking red against his pale skin. In response, his golden eyes stilled, not even a single offense on his face or hatred, rather a calm before storm as he held his cheeks before forming into a deliberate smile of politeness.

Then her mother turned, plunging into the lake without hesitation. The water fought against her as she shoved the guards’ grasp, her fingers locking around Arabella’s fragile frame, pulling her up and then into her arms.

Ariel remembered the sound of her mother’s breathing. She was angry and frustrated, as she dragged them both away from that royal palace, and though she tried to pretend everything was good and that she was tough enough to go against Morpheus and his people, the way her grip was holding her trembled a little, showing her innermost fear toward Morpheus who seemed calm behind them, standing at the water’s edge with an air of a peaceful angel.

He watched them with a serene look on his face, he was still smiling politely as if he hadn’t told his people to drown her younger sister. His expression never changed the slightest, his hands folded neatly behind his back. The red mark on his cheek was already fading and the cut healed on its own but the stillness in his face was not indifference.

Nor was it patience but it was certainty as though he knew what he had done was right and that one day their mother wouldn’t have any other choice rather than going back to him, as though he had predicted everything. And somehow, that had terrified Ariel more than anything else.

Snapping out from her thoughts, Ariel shook her head, "No." She returned from the daze of her memories and now went back to stare at Morpheus. Isn’t it odd? This man’s face still remains the same even though it’s been a decade since their first meeting. It was as though age didn’t affect him.

"I’m not going to follow you," she said to him, answering to his offer.

Morpheus looked back at her, still not offended, still smiling. He hummed, thoughtfully considering her words, and then spoke back, "Have you ever questioned who you and your sister really are, Ariel?"

She narrowed her eyes, feeling her heart thumping. Somehow she knew the answer, somehow she knew that her mother had hidden something critical about their birth but a part of her didn’t want to look into it, her guts telling her that she shouldn’t try to look into it or the truth would break what she had always believed to be real.

She closed her eyes, turning her face away from the knowing look Morpheus had given her, "No. Nor do I want to know about it."