Children of The Fallen

Chapter 9: conform, comply, compromise

A plank of wood would've been more helpful.

Wracked with well deserved guilt, I lay awake. I walked back to my room because like always I did what I was told. What else is new? I'm nothing if not consistently a coward. I'm a bystander knowing that I should've and could've done something but the second anyone- literally anyone tells me to do something, I go with it. I let my anxiety and my fear cloud my judgement. Not even cloud- it completely blocks it out. I conform, I comply, and I compromise myself. I'll question and disobey in my head. Late at night when I'm alone I'll play out fictional scenarios of the same situation where instead of letting things happen without question- I stand up for myself. I fight back, speak up, anything other than what I actually did. I'm the person I want to be, the person I should be. But that's all it is- a fictional scenario I made up in my mind.

Reality floods in and the truth crashes around in my mind. I'm a coward.

I laid in my bed the majority of the night staring at the ceiling wondering what's wrong with me until I exhaust myself enough that I finally start nodding off. I think I slept a whole 20 minutes before I woke up to the sound of yelling coming from outside my room.

Emerging from the hallway into the open living room and kitchen area. The air is charged with an intense stress that begins to suffocate me the second I step into it. "I got it!" Victoria yelled briskly walking out the front door into the dim blue light of dawn.

"Maybe we should all take a minute-." Chloe starts.

"No." Dane seethes, pacing around the room. "He put us all at risk."

"I think you're being a bit dramatic." Grayson said.

"Those hunters are after us- we are at a house that no one knows about to hide. Do you know what the word hiding means?" Dane stops pacing.

"Fuck off." Grayson waves his hand off. "Not like Chloe's drunk of a brother is ever coherent enough to know anything that's going on in his territory."

"It doesn't matter." Dane balls his hands into fists.

"I've gone out before, so has Victoria or does she get a pass because she's your sister?"

"She has enough braincells not to make spectacle of herself. She also doesn't bring her shit to the one place we're not supposed to be bringing attention to."

Grayson shrugs uncaring. I've never seen Dane this pissed off as he stomps over to a still drunk Grayson, grabbing his lapel and in a blink he slams him against the wall all the way across the room. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

Grayson laughs in his face. "You're getting this worked up over one dead girl?"

Dane slams him once more, the back of Graysons head whacking against the wall. "We are supposed to be under the radar and you invite random people into this house to dispose of a body?!"

"They're human and they're discrete." He says as Victoria walks through the door, holding a cigarette she pulled out of the pack she's shoving into her back pocket. "Look, Victoria made them forget so we're all good."

Dane turns to Victoria, his red irises radiating pure anger. "Are they good?"

"Yes." Victoria says pulling out her lighter, lighting the cigarette immediately.

"Are you sure?" Dane asks.

"It upsetting that you doubt my abilities." She says as a puff of smoke leaves her mouth and Chloe twitches at the sight of cigarette smoke in her house.

"See." Grayson leers.

Dane turns back to him, absolutely seething. He lets go of Grayson's lapel and a second later his fist connects with his jaw sending him to the ground. Grayson starts cackling which only infuriates Dane. "I understand why Kendrick never granted you the title of High Royal."