CHAPTER 495: A MOTHER’S INSTINCT

After successfully hurling Morpheus into the well, Arabella slammed the lid shut with a force that echoed across the training grounds. She didn’t spare him a final glance. Loking behind at Morpheus again was a waste of time after all.

Without waiting for anyone to recover from the shock, she turned on her boots and stormed away, her steps trembling the cracked earth beneath her.

Behind her, all the sorcerers forming the half circle stood frozen, scattered around the field like startled statues. They weren’t merely stunned, they were petrified on their spot, unable to move and act on their own as they didn’t know what to do in such situation.

None of them had ever imagined witnessing someone dragging their master by the hair and tossing him into a well like a misbehaving child. They exchanged looks of disbelief, fear, and confusion, unsure of what they were supposed to do. After all, it was Morpheus, THAT Lord Morpheus, who was now locked underground.

Some of them instinctively moved, inching closer to the well, whispering frantic things about pulling him back out, healing him before the damage grew too severe. Duty warred with terror in their minds. He was their master, but she had just overpowered him. They would always be on the side of their Master but the master hadn’t gone against anyone but their own Witch.

So how were they supposed to act against that?

Esme was the first to act, driven by her boldness that always believe she would stand above her. She rushed forward, her hands shooting forward as she reached for the lid.

But before her fingers could graze the wood, Arabella lifted her hand.

The blood left all over the sand jerked upward and shot across the field. It wrapped around the well into a shell, forming a solid, gleaming bright red shield over the lid that sealed it completely. The impact rattled the ground, leaving a humming resonance in the air.

Esme whipped her head toward Arabella, eyes blazing, and shouted, "What do you think you’re doing?! Have you gone insane? Our master needs help!"

"I have," Arabella replied sharply, her voice growing colder the angrier she felt. Her teeth gritted so hard it seemed a miracle they didn’t crack. "No one is to open that well until Morpheus opens it himself."

"He is bleeding!" Esme yelled, the volume rising with her panic. "He might die down there!"

"He will survive," Arabella answered, tone icier than the glacier and cold enough that it cut through Esme’s anger with terrifying clarity. Without another word, she bent down beside Cassius.

His body lay limp on the ground, blood still slowly trickling from his shoulder. Arabella slid her arms underneath him, lifting most of his weight with her magic as even though he looked like a normal and fragile maid, his body still held the full heaviness of a grown man. She held him with a care so gentle it contrasted violently with the destruction she had just caused and that was enough for the sorcerers to understand that her anger hadn’t came from nothing.

But the fact that Morpheus had gone over the line, hurting the maid who Arabella always had following behind her so loyally.

Their fear slowly dwindling but still held confusion as to whether they should follow Arabella’s command as their witch even if it means that Morpheus was going to suffer badly.

Isaac, snapping out of his shock, hurried to her side. His eyes were still wide, fixed on the blood that had covered well for a heartbeat too long before he tore his gaze away and focused on Arabella.

As she began to retreat with Cassius in her arms, Esme shouted again, her voice cracking with a mixture of fear, outrage, and disbelief, "You’re an insane woman! Just because Lord Morpheus excuses you doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want— even if it means hurting him!"

Her voice echoed sharply across the field, but Arabella kept walking, her silence the only answer she was willing to give. Her back remained straight, her steps unwavering, her grip on Cassius firm and unshaking as she carried him away. The blood shield behind her shimmered, sealing Morpheus into darkness while the rest of the world stood helplessly outside it.

Once she returned to her room, Arabella kicked the door shut behind her, the sound echoing sharply against the stone walls. She immediately lowered Cassius onto the bed, her movements frantic yet controlled, and pressed her hands over his wound to stop the bleeding. Blood seeped hot against her palms. Her breath came quick and uneven.

"Isaac!" she snapped, voice ringing through the room with enough force to jolt even the dead awake.

Isaac, who had followed her inside but stood frozen in the corner finally moved. He looked like a man who had watched the world collapse in front of him. His face had drained completely, leaving him pale as parchment. Fear, shock, guilt, all those every possible emotion twisted inside him at once.

He didn’t know what terrified him more.

That Arabella had turned Morpheus into a bloody heap and thrown him into a well, an act so brazen it might spark a war that would consume everyone in this castle...

Or the shameful realization that when Arabella was about to be skewered, when death was flying toward her stomach, he had stood there. Uselessly frozen as he watched the scene while standing rooted on his spot even after he had promised he would protect her.

While Cassius, without hesitation, had hurled himself into the line of fire.

Perhaps both things sickened him. Perhaps neither fully did. Or perhaps the worst truth of all was that, in that split second moment, he had been torn. He was torn between fear and instinct, torn between running and helping, torn between his duty and the overwhelming fear of death that could have consumed his mistress and render her to death on the hands of Morpheus.

And even now, he didn’t know which side he should have taken, cursing himself for being a coward and a poor excuse of a man.

"Bring me warm water, Isaac," Arabella demanded sharply.

The command snapped the last thread holding him in his daze. Isaac blinked hard, his eyes finally focusing on Cassius, still in his female disguise, lying in a sprawl and bleeding over the bed. His jaw tightened, frustration cutting deep at himself. His feelings didn’t matter, his shame didn’t matter now. What mattered now was that Cassius lived.

"Yes, mistress." And he rushed out of the room, almost stumbling in his haste, leaving Arabella alone with Cassius whose lips were tightly pursed as if sewn to make sure that he wouldn’t let out a single cry, not even a yelp.

The moment they were alone, Arabella leaned closer, her voice gentle in contrast to the chaos that had consumed her moments earlier. She brushed a stray lock of hair from his face that had stuck to his forehead from sweat and whispered near his ear, "You can drop the magic. I need to see the real wound in your real form so I can treat it properly."

Cassius gritted his teeth, his breath shallow and hot against her wrist. "You can’t," he managed, voice strained with pain he was desperately trying to mask.

The wound pulsed, and a sharp hiss escaped him involuntarily. It was wrong. He had endured far worse injuries in the past, stab wounds, fractures, burns, even when his head was cut from his head, but this hurt in a way that felt foreign, like a deep, searing pain that curled through his flesh to make sure that even devil himself could feel the pain.

It was off. He shouldn’t be feeling this much pain.

Not from something as simple as a wooden stake.

A disturbing realization crept into his mind.

What if Morpheus hadn’t merely telekinetically launched the broken wood at him? What if he had laced it with magic? Magic designed to burn, to linger, to wound in a way that felt like being bitten by something venomous and alive?

The possibility made Cassius’s stomach twist as if it wasn’t him who had gotten been stabbed but Arabella, she wouldn’t just pass out from the pain, she could be sent in such shock that her body would have given up from the pain.

When he realized that the pain from his stomach bubble into anger and he swore that when he could stab Morpheus in return, he would teach him the pain of being stabbed as well.

"What do you mean I can’t?"

Arabella’s shaking words brought him back to realization that he had gone silent far too long and how it had scared her.

He slowly turned into the body of a man but held her hand over his wound and whispered, "You can try healing them but it won’t work. My body is different."

"Because you’re a vampire?" Arabella felt tears threatening from her eyes to fall, searing her own eyes red. "But magic should work on everyone, even if it’s a vampire."

"My constitution is different. I’m more of a dangerous creature and getting healed for me is different than a normal healing. I can’t be patch up no matter what you do. Well, I could endure this pain for a little until it slowly heals." though he couldn’t add and mention that somehow Morpheus’s attack was healing in a slower rate to him than normal, so slow that it must be even slower than a human’s way of healing. But he refused to tell this to her, not when Arabella looked as if she just had her soul being called by the grim reaper.

"Blood," she then whispered before quickly fumbling her fingers toward her buttons, exposing her own collarbone that spread over her chest, "If you drink blood, wouldn’t that heal you?"