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Chapter sixty-four

D imitri strolled through his mother’s favorite orchard. The temperature maintained for the trees was uncomfortably hot, but he never complained. He happily accompanied her and picked fruits from the branches she was too short to reach.

The memories were bittersweet. His father murdered her here. He’d waited for Dimitri to leave her side. Constantine’s arrow struck his heart, but his father had miscalculated. Dimitri’s shadows burst from him, hungrily reaching for anything to fuel his regeneration.

They reached his mother.

The leading edge of Dimitri’s wing shot forward. Constantine’s headstone cracked beneath the impact and crumbled after the second.

Dimitri turned to his mother’s grave and dropped to his knees.

“Mne zhal-,” Dimitri whispered, pressing his hand to the grass. He couldn’t contain his curse. Hadn’t learned to control it yet.

When he’d realized what he’d done, he killed Constantine with his bare hands. By the time Ambrose had pulled him away, their father was unrecognizable. They’d burned the bodies, and Ambrose told the royal council the King and Queen had been assassinated.

They were buried side by side and Dimitri hated his father’s proximity. He shoved his wing over the grass, scattering chunks of Constantine’s headstone across the orchard.

“I have a wife. I think you would have gotten along with her,” Dimitri said, reminiscing over all the times his mother had instructed, Let the serpents guide you.

Dimitri devoted himself to the God of Conquest and Blood. He’d prayed and left tributes, believing if he proved his loyalty to Vinceret, his curse would one day be lifted.

The curse Astrid insisted was a blessing from the Three-Faced Mother.

“She’s overturned the decree of the Blood-Curse Plague. The royal council is afraid of her.” Dimitri chuckled. “I didn’t have to kill any of them. She wants to teach the Death Spirits to control their magic like you taught me.”

“I’ll teach them to hold the more dangerous aspects of their magic,” Dimitri said as he stood. He smoothed his hand over her headstone. She’d been buried in Ledivion custom, but he knew her heart had always remained in Clorea with the Three-Faced Mother.

Dimitri took to the sky with a powerful beat of his wings. The air cooled drastically as he flew beyond the magic stitched into the orchard by the earth and fire weavers. He landed in the snowy courtyard adjacent to the temple he’d built for Astrid.

He passed parishioners as he entered the temple. Snakes covered the floor behind the towering statues of three robed females, while others basked in the sun streaming through the windows on the pews.

Astrid’s white cobra glutted itself on red meat strewn over the altar as an offering. Dimitri wondered if his wife placed him there and moved to an unoccupied space to the side of the altar. He lowered to one knee.

Mothers, hear me. Thank you for blessing me with your most cunning daughter.