Last Born Of The Desdemona

Chapter 406: Chapter 406: Hood’s Family Traumas

Chapter 406 – Hood’s Family Traumas

While Widow watched the Prison burning, and the Desdemona siblings trying to act like they were the most innocent beings in the world, the Church of Death was still burning.

But now the canopy of flames was shrouded by millions of crimson weathered flies, buzzing around so loud the whole capital seemed to buzz with them.

Dantes Hood, King of Plague, hovered high in the sky, just above the burning Church. His body was cracking like stone dissolving into sand. But in his case, his body was dissolving into crimson flies.

Yet his flies didn’t join the flies eating the flames underneath them, and instead swirled him gently, as if worried by something.

The sky overhead was dark, and the City was heavy with the scent of death. Not because many people died, but simply because the Lord of Death was angry, and the God Beast of Gate of Death was waking up, causing the very grounds of the Church to shake.

From where he stood, Dantes could see the High Priestess deep inside those flames, her whole body covered in flies. But those flies were different.

They were all black.

The God Beast was waking up.

"Well, the beast is quite angry, I see." Dantes whispered, his voice more like flies trying to speak than human themselves.

He was not alone in the sky, however. Morenna was there, with Esmeray also with them, her face angry at being dragged into this burning, hot air.

The three stood in the sky like gods among men, watching the Church, a very aspect of their Faith and Identity, burning.

"Why am I here?" Esmeray asked, crossing her arms around her chest, as if this historic event was boring to watch, "All this matter of the Church burning is your problem, not mine."

"How is it not your problem, Esmeray?" Morenna said with a smile, "This is the Church of Vorn, the god who blessed our bloodline and favored us above all others. Even if we don’t care about it, we need at least to make it look like we do."

She finished by nudging her head towards the ground.

Esmeray followed, looking at where her mother was indicating, and saw an enormous crowd of people standing there, watching them with awe and worry.

"See?" Morenna continued, creating a barrier around them to hide their words and lip movements, "We are watched, my princess. And we have an image to keep."

"All of this is useless nonsense. I have never cared about what others might think of me. You know that, mother."

"I do. That’s why I think you should start now. Because it’s going to be particularly difficult for someone who fucks her cousin — or nephew, choose whatever you want — to live properly if others knew about it."

Esmeray’s heart instantly skipped a dangerous beat. She snapped her head towards her mother, and saw her with a knowing smile.

Morenna’s eyes were filled with amusement, but also with sharp coldness.

Esmeray’s throat ran dry. She then slowly shifted her attention from her mother to her father. The King was already looking at her, his face nothing but clustered crimson flies with two empty sockets of burning cloud of black miasma.

It was not the first time she had seen this side of her father, but it was the first time she felt the horror behind it.

"How...how do you know?" Esmeray managed to ask, thinking of everything wrong that could happen at that instant.

One of them being the fact she could be forbidden to see Dorian.

However, the very thought of that future unfolding made Esmeray’s blood cold, her mind recoiling as if physically hitting a wall.

She could never do that.

Not after everything she had gone through to obtain this feeling of peace and contentment.

"Do you think that your brother could stop us from knowing where you go?" Morenna said, "I am your mother, Esmeray. All these schemes to hide yourself from us were quite useless."

"So you knew since the beginning?" Esmeray was struggling to understand what was happening.

"I did. We did." Morenna replied. Dantes didn’t say anything, his eyes slightly lost, as if dealing with something more important than his daughter’s sex life.

"Then why didn’t you do anything?" Esmeray asked, her voice rising, "Why didn’t you stop me? Why did you watch me go to the brothel over and over and let me get fucked by all these men and women?"

"Because you needed it." The Queen said in the most calming way possible, yet her voice was pained, "You might not remember those times because we deleted those memories in your mind to protect you, but we once tried to stop you from going to the brothel and relieving yourself. We kept you locked for three days, Esmeray. Only three days, at first."

"And you couldn’t hold it anymore, starting to pleasure yourself extensively." Dantes said, staring at his daughter, "You crashed out, literally. You looked like you had lost your mind completely, and nothing of you existed but a beast that cares for nothing but pleasure."

Esmeray began to stagger back, her heart pounding inside her chest. She had no recollection of this.

"After 5 days," Morenna continued, "you began to realize that pleasuring yourself is useless. You need more than your fingers. You have attained your limit. Finally, you tried to kill yourself."

"I...I tried to kill myself?" She muttered, breathing heavily.

"You did. That’s when we took you out of the room." Morenna smiled wryly, "and the first thing you did was trying to fuck m—!"

"Vorn take me, stop! Stop! You don’t need to say everything." Esmeray waved her hand wildly at her mother, unable to hear any more of this story.

The Queen chuckled, turning back to look at the flames that were slowly disappearing, "we realized at that time that your Curse was more severe than we initially believed. And we started to look for another way out of this."

"The pills you have been taking," Dantes said, "they were created by your mother after months of sleepless nights trying to find a way to ease your pain."

Morenna let out a shy chuckle at the sudden words of Dantes. She had told him to never share that information to anyone. There was no need to. She had done it purely because it was her duty as a mother; a duty she never cared about.

But looking at how Esmeray was staring at her, her eyes wide, maybe it was actually not a bad idea in fact.

Because for the first time in a while, her daughter was looking at her as if she was her mother, and not simply a woman who gave birth to her.

Morenna’s heart began to race, feeling something inexplicable.

"You...did that?" Esmeray asked, her chest tightening, palms suddenly sweaty.

"Yes." The Queen said softly, not looking at her daughter as if suddenly shy, "I wanted to help my daughter at all cost. But the pills were not enough, surely because I didn’t know what exactly your Curse was. Then at last, finding no other option, I allowed you implicitly to go to the brothels to satisfy yourself. We had no other choice but to do so. It was either seeing you in such way, or seeing you dead."

Morenna Hood looked at her daughter with pained eyes, "and I am sorry, my princess. I would rather see you fooling around in a brothel than dead."

"But...what about my relationship with Dorian?" Esmeray said, happy to know that her mother had always cared for her in such a way, but also nervous to say the name of Dorian so openly in front of her parents.

Added to the fact that the whole capital was beneath them, the church burning, this conversation was happening in a very strange way.

"You always told me to never engage myself in this type of relationship." Esmeray continued, "you forbade it to me."

"I did."

"Then why are you not saying anything?"

"Do you want me to tell you to stop seeing him?"

"What?! Of course not! And even if you did, I won’t stop. It’s my life."

"See?" Morenna said, chuckling dryly, "You wouldn’t stop even if I told you. And there is something else, too, my princess."

She stared at her seriously, observing every change in Esmeray.

"You are no longer the same." Morenna said, "You no longer have these eyes full of lust, and the ever-present dissatisfied expression that always clouded your face, making you bitter and easy to anger. You have even stopped flirting with people, something you used to do every day."

Esmeray coughed in embarrassment.

"You are better than before, Esmeray. And it’s clearly something related to Dorian and the fact your Curse is mysteriously not acting out anymore."

The princess said nothing, listening carefully.

"But that doesn’t make your relationship with him easy to accept." Morenna continued, her voice now cold, making Esmeray shiver, "You are what you are right now because of the same relationship you are trying to build."

"It’s different." Esmeray whispered, "It’s different, mother. I just want to heal. I just want to be a normal person again, and only him can do that. And even if it’s bad, I do not care mother. If I need to do this disgusting act to get better, I will."

"The question is not whether you are ready to commit the act. Human beings are capable of the worst things imaginable, even while knowing exactly how horrific they are," Dantes added. "The real question is whether you are ready to bear what comes after. And don’t answer yes so foolishly. It is always easy to believe you can bear something when that something exists only as a thought inside your head. When it becomes real, when the consequences finally stand before you and demand their due, you may discover that the person you imagined yourself to be was far stronger than the person you actually are."

Dantes paused, then continued

"Because, my daughter, this relationship is not merely a problem of the social order. That would be the easiest part to deal with. Kill them all, and let Vorn welcome them. What you are doing involves powers of a far higher degree."

He looked at her, and the surrounding became heavy, like his words held physical weights. Morenna said nothing.

"Can you bear it, tell me? Can you bear another curse, Esmeray? Can you bear having children one day and seeing them cursed because of you? Because of you! Do you believe it was — is — easy for us to see you and your brother in such a state?"

Dantes clenched his jaw, and the flies exploded outward, circling the three of them. Esmeray choked at the intensity of her father’s presence.

But Dantes didn’t care. He continued, relentless, "What do you think we felt when Raven was born, unable to move? Do you know that your brother couldn’t move a single part of his body for an entire year? All of that because his mind and the rest of his body are completely disconnected. This is why he is in the same class as you despite being older. Raven needed years just to get used to his own state."

Morenna lowered her head, her body subtly shaking.

"Walking might be a reflex to you, Esmeray. But not for your brother. Even now, when he walks, blinks, moves his arms or any other part of his body, he does it while being completely aware of every movement. He manipulates his own body as if he were both the puppet and the puppeteer at the same time."

Esmeray knew exactly what her father was saying. How many times had she found Raven, in their younger days, suddenly falling to the ground like a broken toy?

Far too many.

Sometimes he would fall and remain on the ground for hours before his mind became strong enough to consciously move his body again.

Raven had cried a lot during those times. He used to cry so much that it was perhaps no wonder the man no longer cried now.

And that was why she hated anyone using her brother’s lack of ambition as an insult. Because none of them knew that the simple act of walking demanded more from Raven than they could possibly imagine.

How could the man try to run toward some distant goal when he had spent years learning how to fucking walk, and was still learning?

He couldn’t. Mentally and physically, he couldn’t.

"Then you came," Dantes continued, his voice heavy. "And I realized, to my horror, that I had to accept seeing my own daughter whoring herself because that was the better option."

Esmeray froze.

"You see now, Esmeray? Those are consequences. Not something you suffer for a day, or a month, or even a year before moving on. Your brother was born twenty years ago, and we are still living with the consequences today. You were born with your curse, and we are still living with that too."

"Are you ready for that?" Morenna asked in little more than a whisper. "Are you ready to bear the consequences of your actions? Those kinds of consequences?"

Esmeray was no longer sure.

And in truth, she had never been sure whether she could bear them or not.

To begin with, it was never the question she had asked herself. Because to her, only one thing had ever seemed worth asking: Was she ready to live her entire life bound by lust like an animal?

The answer was a resounding no. She couldn’t. And she wouldn’t.

"I don’t know if I am ready or not," Esmeray admitted honestly, breathless and afraid. "But I refuse to be too afraid of what my life might become to actually live it. Whatever comes our way, we will deal with it when it comes. For now..."

She looked down and saw that the fire had been completely extinguished by the flies.

"I simply want to be with Dorian and build with him a place we can call our own."

Morenna and Dantes looked at their daughter, then slowly turned their attention back toward the Church.

"Just remember one thing from me, my princess. Something I learned myself," Morenna whispered. "In the same way that you will die as you lived, nothing born from something rotten will ever bear good fruit."

Esmeray looked at her.

"Then am I something rotten, Mother?"

Morenna smiled.

"You are not. But that’s me, your mother, talking."

She glanced at her daughter.

"But are you, my princess?"

Esmeray’s red eyes glowed dangerously.

"Watch me."

—End of Chapter 406—