Page 63 of The Quiet
She didn’t have to fall in love with him. She didn’t have to fall in love with anyone.
“You’re not irresistible, you know that?” She shouted as if to assert the thoughts in words. “You’re just like everyone else!”
Jackson stared, completely dumbfounded before she tore around the corner and paused. In the strangest of moments, she finally understood what it had been from her conversation with Jackson that had stuck out to her the days before.
She turned back around the corner and walked coolly past him, standing over the map she’d been staring at. Jackson didn’t speak, coming up behind her in a cautious way.
Her finger settled on the map. “Here,” she whispered.
Jackson looked over her shoulder, at where her finger had settled. Depicted in The Quiet on the far corner beyond the mountains was the temple to the Spirit of Death.
“To the Spirit of Death?” Jackson asked.
“Interesting choice,” they both turned to find Paris approaching the doorway. “I heard yelling.” She eyed them both knowingly as she entered the room, perusing the map. “Lovers’ quarrel?”
“We aren’t lovers,” Ella said with so much force that Jackson seemed taken aback.
Paris seemed to watch him accusingly which only exacerbated the confusion on his face before she added, “Death is at the complete opposite side of the mountains. We didn’t build anything specific for Death since the idea itself is defined by vacancy. It’s an empty valley. It’s mostly just criminals that go there to hide from the Imperia, seeing as most people don’t really want to explore it.”
“I can take you there if you want,” she heard from the couch, looking over to see Lambspeak swirling the tea in his cup before looking up at her with an almost innocent expression on his face.
Ella blinked back into the present and Paris smiled. “Tell Lambspeak I said hello, will you? Jackson never passes on his messages anymore,” she said, Jackson standing behind her with a dark expression on his face and crossed arms.
“He said he can take us there,” Ella said, watching Jackson.
“It’s three weeks’ worth of arduous traveling otherwise.” Paris walked past them, leaning back against the doorframe of the exit. She was dressed simply in all black today, her hair tied high above her head with long, golden earrings that flickered as she lifted red nails to play with them.
“There’s no rush,” Jackson reminded her. “I know you feel like there is but, there isn’t.”
Ella looked between Paris and Jackson.
“I can heal your arm too,” Lambspeak popped in again, taking a sip from the cup as he maintained eye contact with her. Ella shut everything else out as she approached the chair across from him and eased down.
“You can’t pretend that you’re offering to help for no reason at all,” she said.
Lambspeak watched her for a long time, at last setting the cup down and putting it on the table in front of them. He leaned back and rested his arms behind the couch in a gesture of confidence and openness.
“I came back for leverage,” he admitted. “I meant it when I said I’d heal your arm for nothing. I don’t like seeing you in pain. The transportation to Death and back, agreeing to do that, has already given me what I wanted, which is the conversation we’re having right now. I ended up helping you a lot, you know. You don’t remember now, of course, because it hasn’t happened yet. Unfortunately, these days, our negotiations have fallen through.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been avoiding me. I know you’re planning to leave. This has gotten too dangerous for you, and I can tell you’re afraid to end up like one of the Strike slaves you watched growing up. It isn’t a fear I can reason with. So, I came to set a precedent. Anything else I do from now on will cost you.”
“Cost me what?” she asked.
“I want your fear,” he said, “to you, it’s the most valuable thing that you own, and I can’t take it without breaking your trust, but I’ve reached an impasse with us.”
“So you want my free will, is what you’re saying?” She responded with an angry edge in her voice.
“Not at all. I’m giving you a choice right now. If I was really so controlling, I would have helped myself by now. I’ve been close. You’ve tried to tempt me with it out of anger multiple times during some of our more petty arguments,” he said.
“But instead, you go back to an earlier version of me, abuse your power, and take back the favors you once did for free. So, I’mright to be afraid? In the end, you abuse your power to control me.”
He smiled at this. “You aren’t without your own abuses, Ella, as subtle as they might be. I see them, even when you don’t. We’ve been each other’s poisons for a while now, and I think if I retold our history, you’d see that neither of us really want it any other way. You act so disgusted by it now, but in my time, you’ve willingly given me everything else. In moderation, I assure you. We’ve had quite a pleasant relationship for years, but there’s more to it than that,” he added and paused. “Your fear has always been what truly divided us, and now your fear is going to kill you.”
Ella exhaled slowly. “What do you mean?”
Lambspeak turned the cup again, “versions of myself cascade secrets from the future, telling previous versions of what lies ahead, existing both in every moment and yet segmented into all of them, much like people but with a deeper interconnectedness with ourselves. Ahead of it all is the one who discovered how to step back in time first. He tells us what portions of the past we can and cannot interfere with. Somewhere along the line, the message was passed on of your death.”
