VOX

Ch 13

It was like he poured acid down her throat.

"I don't-what are you-I'm-" her tongue felt like it was too thick for her mouth, the words coming out one on top of the other.

"It's fine Raine." It felt anything but. "I know you and Robert got some kind of agreement, and I'm not trying to get in the middle of that," he held up his hands in surrender as if to prove himself. "I'm just trying to tell you my story."

"How does that involve Lorraine Stokes?" The words fell from her lips too quickly it felt odd referencing herself, yet not herself, in the third person. It also felt weird confirming that she in fact was not Lorraine Stokes.

"Because Bobby and I have that in common." Seeing that she didn't automatically understand what he was saying, he thankfully explained further. "My mother died when I was nine. She was exposed to a chemical at the factory she worked at, and her heart was just never...right after it." The ache in her heart felt as though someone had snipped her heartstrings in two. He leaned back on the bed, his shoulders resting against the wall, his eyes drifting towards the window she sat beside most mornings, a sad faraway smile on his lips. "There were some good days though, when she was able to get out of bed or sit outside with us. She'd tell these stories about the constellations, or make-believe places, and it was like things were normal, ya know?"

Her version of "normal" teetered on a feeble edge most days, but she liked the sound of his. There was an abundance of impatient questions sitting just behind her teeth, but the ghost of torturous memories in his eyes kept them at bay.

Coming out in a drained sigh, he plowed on. "When she died, my family, well...they kinda lost it. I was too young to really understand what had happened, but they wanted vengeance. Those guards that came askin' about 'defectors', that was the group my dad befriended a few weeks after her funeral. They publicly spoke out against the crowns, promised fair treatment and safety, and were devoted to overthrowing the thrones. So it seemed like a logical choice.

"Only the crowns weren't too happy about our group. I remember he'd come home some nights paranoid, or covered in blood, really freaked my brother out."

"Wait, you have a brother?" She didn't mean to interrupt, but she totally meant to interrupt.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. His name was Zach. He was five years older than me, real stereotypical older sibling." He chuckled quickly to himself, but her brain had stopped listening after the word was.

"You said 'was'" she said slowly, more of a question than a statement.

He slumped further on the bed, taking a bit of the blue sailboat comforter with him as he laid back onto it. "Yeah."

"Oh." It was all she could think of. I'm sorry just didn't feel right, and are you okay was stupid. Clearly he wasn't.

"He got it into his thick skull that he had to join the group too. I could never tell if he did it for our mom or to make our dad proud, he kinda closed himself off. Then dad got hurt in a failed attack on a country wide parade the crowns were having. They were in way over their heads, the amount of Royal Guards that surround just one royal is a lot to take on, but could you imagine how many show up when all six are in the same place? Those guards finished them off without even alerting the crowds.

"He's in a chair now. I mean, it's probably for the best now that I think about it. He would have driven himself into the ground without that reality check, and now he's their lead strategist. It's mostly desk work, but it's what he was always good at." One of his hands had absentmindedly picked up a still-damp strand of her hair that hung next to his face. She watched as it twirled between his fingers, almost hypnotic.