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“Come with us!” my mother said.
“I cannot,” my father said. “I love you.”
And without time even to kiss her, my father waded back to shore and waved his huge arms as he drew his sword. “Hey! Here I am! Shoot me!”
“No!” Mother cried. “No!”
The arrows slowed and then stopped thudding into the boat and turned instead on my father, who ran up the embankment, sword held high.
We disappeared around a corner, wiping him from view.
I never saw my father again.
I awoke to the comforting sensation of cold cloth pressing against my blazing skin. It relaxed me. And when the cloth was taken away to dampen again in freshwater, I missed its icy kiss.
A powerful headache pulsed at my temples and shook me to my core. My eyes were clenched tightly shut and I could barely open them. When I did, a searing pain bolted from my eyeballs and down to my racing heart.
I cracked my eyes open and peered at my nurse. The female human maid called Maisie. She’d been taken prisoner aboard the Silent Shadow when I’d been little more than a deckhand. A customer ordered a human beauty, but by the time she arrived, he was all but destitute. With no intention of returning her to Earth, she was tasked with maintaining the ship and cooking our meals.
I laid prostrate on the bathroom floor. I pushed myself up and wiped the saliva from my lips. I took a moment before stumbling into my bed.
Maisie wore a frown that made her once-youthful appearance crinkle with age.
“The fever’s getting worse,” she said.
My eyes moved toward the door. I didn’t like talking about my weakness, especially when the crew could be listening.
I said, “I am a Titan. We don’t—”
“—get sick,” she completed. “I know, I know. And yet, you are sick. Very sick. If you don’t see a doctor soon, I don’t think you’ll live much longer.”
“I won’t live much longer if I don’t get some of your delicious soup in me soon,” I said, sitting up.
She moved to my desk and carried the tray over. Her skinny arms shook with the weight. She placed it on my lap. With this sickness, it was just about the only thing I could keep down. The only thing more demanding than my headache was my intense hunger.
I spooned it into my mouth and let it slide down my throat. “One of these days, you’re going to have to teach me the recipe for this soup.”
Maisie grunted. “I’d like to see you in a kitchen first.”
“I told you,” I said. “I can’t. Having the captain in the kitchen doesn’t have the kind of image I’m trying to cultivate.”
Maisie folded her arms. “But it does when you’re stuffing your face with my cakes, I notice.”
“It’s the crew. I can only be what they expect me to be. And after this soup, they’d expect me to have some treacle pudding.”
“You couldn’t keep it down.”
“Then I’ll have the pleasure of eating over and over again.”
She curled up her face in disgust. I loved teasing her. “I would find that funny if I didn’t think it was the truth.”
“It is the truth.”
“That’s why it’s disgusting.”
Not for the first time, I wondered how I could trust Maisie—this human female—with my life when I could never do the same with my crew.
I laughed and immediately wished I hadn’t. It sent shockwaves through my brain like it had its own private storm.
