To His Hell and Back

Chapter 528: You Said Trust-I

By the time her eyes opened again, all Arabella could feel was loss.

It crashed into her without warning, a wave of grief so heavy it stole the breath from her lungs. Her heart wrenched violently, as if something vital had been torn away and taken with it. She clutched at her chest instinctively, fingers curling into the fabric of her clothes, but it did nothing. The pain was not physical. It burrowed far deeper than bone or flesh, settling somewhere nameless, somewhere she had no words for.

Loss. Misery. A hollow ache that refused to be explained.

When Circe appeared before her again, she was already moving, rushing to Arabella’s side with uncharacteristic urgency. Her hands hovered, checking her breathing, her pulse, the steadiness of her gaze, as if afraid that something irreversible had happened inside her mind.

Their eyes met.

Circe’s fingers twitched.

She took a step back.

Not in caution— but in recoil.

Atlas, standing just behind her, immediately sensed the shift. Alarm flared across his face as he grabbed Circe by the shoulders. "What’s wrong?" he demanded urgently. "What’s the matter? Is there a proble—"

The rest of his words died in his throat.

The moment he looked at Arabella properly, his expression froze, every trace of color draining from his face as his grip on Circe tightened unconsciously.

Confused by their reactions, Arabella slowly lifted her hand. At her silent command, the mirror on the bedside table trembled before floating upward, gliding through the air until it hovered directly in front of her face.

She stared.

One of her eyes— her left— was no longer green.

It glowed gold.

Not bright like sunlight, but deep and molten, as if something ancient and watching stared back at her from within.

"Is this... bad?" Atlas whispered, his voice barely audible as he leaned toward Circe without taking his eyes off Arabella. "Does this mean her power is cracking? Is it dangerous? Circe—" His voice sharpened. "Circe!"

She didn’t answer.

Circe stood perfectly still, her face pale, her eyes locked onto Arabella’s reflection as though she were staring at a ghost. Her lips moved soundlessly at first, before she finally spoke.

"Who is Jullie?"

Arabella blinked, slowly lowering the mirror as she wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. She frowned, unsettled by the question. "Why are you asking that?" Then her attention snapped back to the reflection she had just seen. "What about my eye?" she pressed. "Why has it changed? I can still see fine, but you both look like I’ve committed some kind of crime."

Circe looked away.

"I don’t think," she said quietly, "that you should have it."

Arabella’s patience snapped. "Have what?" Her brows drew together sharply. "Speak, Circe."

Circe swallowed.

"Demon blood."

The word fell into the room like a corpse.

Silence followed, thick and suffocating, as Atlas’s gaze darted from Circe to Arabella and back again, disbelief etched deeply into his face. Circe herself seemed shaken by her own words, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as she shook her head again and again.

"No," she muttered, as if arguing with the world itself. "No way... that’s impossible."

Arabella straightened despite the ache in her chest. "My parents aren’t demons," she said firmly. "You know that."

Circe nodded, too quickly. "I do. I know." Her voice faltered before she asked, eyes sharp and searching now, "Have you ever been in a great accident?"

Arabella stiffened as memories stirred from her head.

The pool of blood on the forest ground. A body collapsing into the dirt. A child standing too still, watching something she should never have seen. She remembered Ariel crying, calling out to Jullie who had pretended as their mother.

What did... Jullie do then?

Her fingers curled slowly into a fist.

"Yes," she answered at last.

"As expected you have died so many times from the start, maybe Jullie realized the curse your birth mother had given to you and did something to rectify one of your death," Circe whispered. "But Jullie... if she affected you to the point that somehow a part of your body turning to what a demon would own... she must be-"

"A half demon herself," she completed the word.

"Do you know what Jullie truly is?" Circe asked.

Atlas looked at Circe, "Was Jullie never someone you know, Circe?"

"I would remember the name of all the sorcerers on my coven," answered Circe with her hands clenched tight. "I wouldn’t forget it but the people who had just came, I’m not sure."

"But Jullie called Morpheus her brother," Arabella said at last, her voice low and strained, as if speaking the words aloud might fracture something fragile inside her. "At first I thought it was just the way she spoke. Some people do that when they’re close, don’t they? When friendship turns familiar enough to resemble blood."

She swallowed.

"After all... Morpheus and Jullie don’t look alike. Not in the way siblings usually do."

But now that she allowed herself to sit with the memory, to turn it over instead of pushing it away, the truth pressed closer. Jullie had never spoken of Morpheus lightly. There had been weight in her words, a resignation that went beyond fondness or loyalty.

Perhaps she had meant it literally all along.

A chill crawled down Arabella’s spine, spreading to her fingertips and threading itself through her nerves. Her shoulders tensed as a shudder ran through her body, unbidden and sharp.

"Then isn’t it..." Her voice faltered for the briefest moment before she forced herself to continue. "Isn’t it forbidden?"

The room felt colder.

"The demon that fathered Morpheus," Arabella went on, her fists tightening as fragmented memories aligned into something coherent and horrifying. "Maybe he didn’t only father Morpheus. Maybe there was another child." She lifted her gaze slowly. "And that child was Jullie."

Silence followed.

"Then they are..." Atlas murmured, the words tasting wrong in his mouth. "...half-siblings."

Arabella hadn’t realized she’d started biting at her thumb until a sharp sting brought her back to herself. She looked down, startled, just as Isaac stepped closer and gently pressed a folded handkerchief over her fingers. His brow was furrowed deeply, his worry disproportionate to the small wound, as if he were afraid she might unravel entirely if left unchecked.

"What else did you see?" Circe asked.

Her tone was careful now, measured, the way one speaks when stepping across thin ice. She did not look away from Arabella’s face, as if fearing that whatever truth came next might shatter her if she lost focus even for a second.

Arabella inhaled slowly.

Then she told them everything.

She spoke of the memories that had surfaced, of Wendy and the sorcerers, of betrayal dressed as loyalty. She spoke of Morpheus’s ambition—not only Hell, not only dominion over the world they knew, but Heaven as well. Of a plan so vast and deranged that it blurred the line between grief and madness, love and destruction.

By the time she finished, her throat burned and her chest felt hollow.

"The more reason we have to stop him," Atlas said quietly, rubbing his arms as if trying to ward off the image forming in his mind. "To want control over everything... that isn’t ambition anymore. That’s annihilation." He hesitated, then added, "But the way he spoke... it sounded like he truly loved Jullie."

"Love and obsession often wear the same face," Circe said bitterly, biting into the inside of her cheek as if punishing herself. "Especially when the one feeling it lacks the maturity to understand their own emotions." Her gaze darkened. "You were right, Bella. I should have corrected him when I realized he was wrong. When I saw that he mistook despair for hatred and devotion for possession."

Arabella listened, unmoving.

Then she straightened.

"There’s no use crying over what has already happened," she said firmly, though her voice trembled just enough to betray the effort it took to remain composed. "What has corroded cannot return to what it once was. Grief won’t undo centuries of rot." She lifted her eyes to Circe, steady and resolute. "What matters now is stopping Morpheus."

Her fingers curled against the handkerchief Isaac still held.

"We can’t kill him," she continued. "Not without destroying everything in the process. So I need your help."

Circe studied her then—truly studied her. Not as a witch evaluating a threat or a queen measuring an ally, but as someone recognizing courage where she once believed only recklessness lived.

For a fleeting moment, Circe wondered if she herself had failed centuries ago. If she had lacked the resolve Arabella now showed so painfully.

But when she noticed Arabella’s hands trembling, when she saw the strain in her jaw and the shadow of fear in her eyes, Circe understood.

Arabella wasn’t fearless.

She was terrified.

She was unraveling inside, desperate for news of Cassius, burdened by memories that should never have resurfaced. And yet she still stood tall—not because she was unbreakable, but because someone she loved was at stake.

Something Circe herself had once failed to do.

She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them with renewed clarity. "We have an idea," she said, voice steady now. "But it will require your cooperation. Everything must be set in motion tomorrow."

Arabella looked at her for a long moment.

Then she smiled.

It wasn’t wide or triumphant, but it was sincere—an expression carved from resolve rather than hope. And in that quiet smile, Circe saw something unyielding.

Respect passed between them with Circe staring at Arabella with more guilt than before.

The following morning, Arabella had finished her breakfast alone. As she had suspected, Morpheus was far too enraged by the rumors of her who had played with the men in her room. She had made sure that his trust on her would corrode and it wasn’t hard considering how Morpheus never truly believed in someone in the first place.