Page 69 of The Quiet
Hunting. Research. A bit of both.
She refrained from asking why. Neither of those words were friendly in her mind and she knew she’d regret asking.
“Okay” she said.
Take care.
That was the last he spoke, but even then, it never felt like he was gone.
CHAPTER 19
THE LION'S DEN
ELLA STEPPED FORWARD through the marsh.
“We’d be better off getting more information,” She reasoned. She could feel Jackson’s reservations as they proceeded forward. The resolution to everything felt so close, despite Ella having little true comprehension of what everything meant. The idea of waiting three weeks of traveling and preparation to find out more seemed intolerable.
They walked through the entrance, Ella inspecting the great, hollow rock. The interior had been mostly gutted.
“As soon as something feels off, Lambspeak can take us back in a second,” Ella said, feeling pulled into the burned hallways. It was as if the walls bled oil. She began navigating toward what she vaguely remembered was a path to a staircase, scanning every detail of the massive structure for clues that would spark her memory. “If Peter is here, does it have to be a conflict?” she asked.
Jackson paused behind her, and she turned and met his eyes from where she was on the staircase.
“If he’s kept his distance and has stayed all the way out here, is it really such a problem? You said so yourself, you’d wished they’d died together,” Ella asked, arguing with his silence.
Jackson’s hand rested on the hilt of the dagger in his belt, his eyes narrowed with a challenging reluctance. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that between Lambspeak and Peter, I think you and I both know who feels like a bigger threat. Maybe Peter can help us find a way to prevent Lambspeak,” she reasoned and he looked around as if others might be listening. She followed his lead and scanned the emptiness of the enclosure again. It was all vacant with nothing but shades of black and gray.
“Ella,” he warned as if her thoughts were headed in a dangerous direction. “Peter completely controlled the civilized world. You can’t tell me you’re thinking of getting his help.”
“But he’s not controlling it now, is he? He created a curse to preserve the lives of his people,” Ella said, stepping back off the stairs as she reasoned with him. She didn’t know why she provoked him now, as if in arguing with him, she was arguing with a different version of herself. Jackson, more than anyone, she knew, understood what it meant to feel divided.
She hoped speaking with him might help sort herself out, because despite her determination to plow forward, her own urgency also unnerved her. Every passing day, she felt less in control, driven by needs she didn’t understand. She admitted that she felt selfish, just as she had with Kay, but couldn’t stop. Not yet. She resolved that one day, she’d pay both of them back for enduring her stubbornness. She might be acting irrationally now, but she would at least try and be fair in the end.
“His herd,” Jackson corrected, “there’s a difference.”
“There’s a reason Lambspeak has been meddling in the past. There has to be a possible future that still exists without him in it. He’s trying to prevent that,” Ella said. “You said we were better off with Peter. That’s what you told Paris.”
Jackson fell silent, confronted with words she knew he couldn’t quite deny. He took her arm, searching her face as they stood there in the dead quiet. His hand felt like a tether back to earth and it calmed her, when his alter ego had so easily destabilized her.
“What did he say to you to scare you so badly?” Jackson asked. “I can tell you’re scattered. When ROSE got like this, we pulled them out of the field. But what can we do with you?”
He said I fall in love with you.
She couldn’t admit that. It already felt too real, too much of an expression of how close he already seemed to her.
“You can’t fight me,” she warned. Despite the gentleness with which he treated her, it wasn’t lost to her that if the mission called for it, he could be severe.
“I should have had you take Amnesia when I had the chance,” he admitted but without any clear emotion.
“It’s not too late,” she said, still testing him.
He then asked the question she’d been asking herself for weeks.
“What are you after?” His hand slid down her arm and coiled around her fingers. She wondered how he managed to be so steady and she tied herself to that feeling.
“I don’t know,” she admitted and in that was a confession of her own weakness. “It feels like everything. I can’t stop myself.”
