32. Helsa
HELSA
I ran anyway.
Not because I thought I could make it. I had done the math on that already and the math was not in my favor. I ran because standing still was the one thing I was absolutely certain I couldn't do. Moving felt like the only argument I had left.
Behind me: Footsteps. Heavy and unhurried, building.
I had felt him run before, carrying me. I had felt the momentum of it, like a massing juggernaut. He gathered speed like something that did not have a top gear, just continuous acceleration.
He was doing it again.
I could feel it in the rock under my feet. The vibration of him getting faster.
Water splashed at my feet, slowing me down further.
The water.
It was back. Or coming back. The crossing I had been carried across was already submerging, the rock beneath it invisible, the gap between the spire island and the main platform gone under a skin of moving water that was getting less shallow by the second.
The churning channel at the spire's base fed into it, the Wild Card Moon carrying out its final pass. The result was the same in every direction I looked.
No crossing. No route. No Rhaek on the other side to run toward even if there had been.
I wanted him there so badly it felt painful. Him, on the other side of that water, and me here, and nothing crossable between us.
The footsteps thundered behind me. Heavy. Inevitable.
I let out a cry, realizing my timeline would soon come to an end. I had only one direction I could go.
One direction I could drag this out for just a little bit longer.
The Controller’s huge arms swung down as I shifted direction, bolting under one of his immense boulder-like shoulders and taking off back in the direction of the spire.
The Controller let out a bellowing laugh that made the water shudder with ripples. “So excited to be in my arms that you choose to rush into my lair?”
I let his words run off me like rainwater. There had to be somewhere I could run to. Somewhere I could hide.
Please.
I ran for the collar of rock, no destination in mind, just blind movement. The water collected on my right and the spire rose at my front. Then came the heavy footsteps of him rushing up behind me.
I stumbled at the slight rise leading up to the spire. It was muddy and I lost my footing three times before I finally found my feet.
I ran around the spire and immediately, someone grabbed me from the left .
Fast and hard, the grip closing before I saw it coming. It hurt, a short bright pain in my arm where the fingers found it. I was already fighting before I was turning, elbow up, heel driving back.
I looked up.
Not the Controller.
Rhaek? My mind leaped excitedly before I registered it wasn’t him either.
I went still.
The face above me was not grey-green and dense. It was something else entirely. Different eyes, different build, the iridescent patches along the jaw and neck shifting color as they caught the light. The expression looking down at me was not the flat possessive certainty of the Controller.
And I knew things had just taken another turn for the worse.