Es took a single step backward. Then another. Her forced smile twitched, faltered, and finally cracked as she seed to recognize, far too late, that remaining in Arabella’s presence any longer would only worsen the nightmare she had invited upon herself.
And so she turned as if she had just seen a ghost coming after her.
She practically bolted out of the place, her cloak snapping behind her like a creature fleeing for its life. Her hurried footsteps echoed down the corridor, as if the faster she ran, her biggest fear wouldn’t co into existence.
Arabella watched her without moving, without speaking. She simply stared after Es as she ran— as if the sight itself confird sothing she had long suspected.
When Es finally vanished around the far corner, the silence that settled was sharp and cold.
Isaac was the first to break it.
"What was that?" he asked, eyes wide as he looked between Arabella and the corridor Es had escaped through. "She looked as if she was running from a ghost."
Arabella didn’t answer right away. Instead, she tilted her head slightly, her gaze still lingering on the empty space Es had disappeared into.
"What do you think is the reason Es wears a cloak so often?" Arabella finally asked, turning to Isaac with a thoughtful hum.
Isaac blinked, caught off guard, "A reason...? Because she prefers it?" he guessed with a shrug. "She seems like the dramatic type."
Arabella let out a soft chuckle, though nothing about her eyes suggested amusent.
"That could be one reason," she said lightly. "But it isn’t the real one. Not the one she fears people discovering."
Isaac turned fully toward her now, curiosity overtaking confusion.
Arabella’s voice lowered, "I heard whispers, long before she ca to the castle," she began. "There was an incident... supposedly she bumped into soone, and in the fall, her cloak slipped. They saw her real face."
Isaac raised his brows. "Her real face... oh. Was she—" he joked without thinking, "ugly before?"
Arabella didn’t smile, not even a twitch.
Instead, she looked ahead with an expression that made Isaac imdiately regret the joke.
"Not ugly," she murmured. "But half her face was lted. From birth. A defect, or perhaps a curse— no one really knew."
Isaac’s shoulders stiffened. "Oh." The levity in his voice vanished.
He scratched his chin awkwardly, looking for sothing appropriate to say and finding nothing.
Arabella continued walking, her steps slow and asured as she moved past him and toward the open garden hall.
"And the face she has now..." Isaac continued cautiously, "that’s Morpheus’s work, isn’t it?"
Arabella’s lips curved, not into a smile but into sothing sharper, sadder, and knowing.
"Morpheus gave her that face," she said. "But it isn’t hers. It never was. It belongs to soone else. Soone long gone."
Isaac’s eyes widened, "Soone you knew?"
Arabella didn’t respond. Her green eyes flickered with a distant, haunted recognition, as if a mory she had spent years burying finally rose to the surface.
Isaac tried again, softer this ti. "Milady... where are we going?"
Arabella stepped into the staircase, the moonlight washing over her features from the window behind them as she made her way to the garden. Instead of answering where they were going, she replied to the first question Isaac had asked.
"Yes, I knew that face." Arabella’s voice softened, almost as though she were speaking to a mory rather than to Isaac. "The person who had that face... I always believed they were a man. Everything about them felt sharp, distant, wrapped in a kind of quiet sorrow. So at first, when I saw Es, I thought she was rely imitating soone else, or hiding sothing entirely different. But the more pieces I fit together, the more I realized that perhaps it was who misunderstood. That person who helped ... perhaps she was a woman from the very beginning. Soone Morpheus knew. Soone whose face he has preserved long after her death, placed on Es like a mask. As if she had to pretend to be that person despite the fact that she had long died."
Isaac’s brows pinched together. His steps slowed as he tried to make sense of it. "It’s strange," he murmured. "You said the woman who owned that face t you outside the castle of the sorcerers. But nobody has ever spoken of such a face, and trust , if it had existed within these walls, gossip would’ve torn it apart by now. Two identical faces aren’t exactly sothing people overlook..."
"Because she was dead," Arabella said quietly, all this ti she had wondered where that woman had disappeared and it was now that she finally realized that she did have two mother and the woman having Es’s face is her second mother.
Her birth mother died.
She couldn’t recall when exactly her birthmother had died but that once violent woman turned kind not long after she had t the woman whose face was now on Es’s skin.
That woman was a man in her mory due to how androgeneous her face was. She didn’t know when exactly that woman replaced her birth mother but if she was also a sorcerers... she should have the ability to morph her skin into soone else, just like how Morpheus had done to Es.
"And I think the only reason I stumbled upon her outside the castle was because she had run away from him. From Morpheus."
Isaac blinked, startled. "But deserters don’t survive," he reminded her. "The curse of the castle reaches them no matter how far they flee. It always has. And yet..." His voice trailed off as another piece slid into place. "Morpheus must have... cared for her. Enough to take her face, preserve it, and place it on soone else. Even if she defied him."
Arabella didn’t stop walking, but her steps grew slower, almost contemplative. "Because he can’t forget that face."
"Not only that," Isaac added thoughtfully, rubbing the back of his neck. "Lord Morpheus despises deserters. It’s one of the few things that can truly enrage him. If she ran away, he wouldn’t have been satisfied with just killing her. He would have wanted her erased entirely. body, spirit, mory."
"And yet," Arabella whispered, turning her gaze toward the distant spires of the sorcerers’ castle, "the fact remains... he kept her face. He rembered every line of it. As if forgetting her was the one thing he refused to do."
As they reached the garden, Arabella stopped right a few windows below the throne room.
She can’t see what had occurred inside the room but she has her own way. By raising her hand a folded paper bird float from her finger to the sa window of the throne room. Then with her other hand, she had pulled a round hand mirror, placing it between her and Isaac.
Using it, they could see what the paper bird had seen, the fact that they were now looking inside the throne room with Es who had rushed to the room and Morpheus who was leaning to the side of his arm rest on his throne chair.
He didn’t seem to be sleeping but when Es had ca without a notice, fuming in all sorts of emotions and disturbing him when she wasn’t supposed to, Morpheus was stirred awake and appeared unhappy as he eyed Es from where he was, narrowing his gaze sharply.
"What is it again, Es? Hadn’t I warned you not to disturb for four days? I had even allowed you to do whatever you wanted, even if it involves Arabella or that maid of hers that you hate so vehently."
"No... not that," Es closed the door and rushed to the short staircase to the chair where Morpheus had sat on, "Milord... you told that this face of mine is unique... that no one else has this face apart from and how you love this face so deeply."
"I did say that," Morpheus confird solemnly. When he raised from his chair, he walked and bent one leg, placing one hand under Es’s chin and for a mont admired that face so dearly. "You are not the brightest, not the fastest, not the strongest, but when I see your face I always ended up giving whatever you wanted, isn’t that right?"
Es’s eyes glimred and from her faze she could see how Morpheus was looking at her.... her face.
But was it really her who he was looking at?
Whose tender gaze stared at her so aningfully?
"Last night hadn’t you asked for Arabella’s power? A power that matches her?" Morpheus released his hands and walked back to his chair, sitting down as though he was the King that belonged to control the world for good as if everything was his to own. "Hadn’t I done that for you? It was an impossible task yet because you asked for it, I did what you want. So what it is that you are worried again now, Es?"
"This face," Es held her own face. She should be happy but a feeling of fear and jealous crept into her heart. "Arabella knew this face."
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