Nevara
For a moment, I didn’t understand what he’d said.
Not because I hadn’t heard him.
But because my mind refused to let it make sense.
Your brother was one of us.
The words didn’t land all at once. They echoed instead, bouncing around inside my head like something searching for meaning it couldn’t find.
My brother?
No.
That didn’t fit.
Didn’t align with anything I knew. Anything I remembered. Anything I had built my life around.
I stared at Brent, waiting for the correction that didn’t come.
Waiting for the explanation that would make it less absurd.
It never did.
“You’re wrong,” I said finally, though the conviction didn’t feel as strong as I wanted it to.
Brent didn’t argue.
That was what made it worse.
He simply watched me, calm and patient, like he’d seen this react
