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Then another explanation shimmied up to the surface of my consciousness.
My elder brother died two weeks ago. Maybe it was reminding me of my previous brush with death.
When I lost her.
Maybe I was under too much stress. Maybe I’d imagined her.
The hair still stuck up on my arms, my senses telling me what I saw had been real.
I slumped in a chair back in the anteroom and ran my hands through my hair. I needed to keep it together. I needed to be strong for Titans everywhere. They were looking to me for leadership.
I shouldn’t be in this situation. I should be helping support, not lead.
The death of my elder brother, Qale, was bound to affect me. I’d tried hard to suppress it until after this whole situation had been taken care of. He’d left to marshal our army and meet the Changelings on the battlefield. He left me in charge of the castle. I watched as his space shuttle took off and was swatted from the air by a missile.
The force knocked me off my feet. The shards rained on North Wood, setting the birds to caw and take flight. Even then, I couldn’t believe he was dead. He was my elder brother. He took after our father.
To my eyes he was indestructible.
“Get me over there!” Zes had bellowed. “Now!”
I tried to climb aboard the space shuttle with him to search for my brother but he held me back.
“You’re the lord now,” he said. “Someone in House Taw must be here always.”
I watched as the space shuttle took off and descended on the first ship’s remains.
When he came back, it was with a handful of charred bodies. I couldn’t identify any of them as my brother. I didn’t want to admit he was dead, that I was now without a brother, a mother, a father, or a wife.
Titans weren’t supposed to be afraid of death. And I wasn’t. At least, not for myself. I was afraid for those who died and left me behind.
I was always the one left behind.
My shoulders sagged as I realized the truth.
My wife wasn’t at the party. Just as Qale wasn’t alive somewhere. It was nothing more than a sick joke my mind played to remind me of what I’d lost.
Imagining my wife running around wasn’t going to help me. I needed to focus on my meeting with the Changelings. I couldn’t let something like this distract me.
Not when I had so many Titan lives in my hands.
I blocked off my emotions and slid my mask back on over my face. I was Lord Taw. I was out for myself, for power, for glory. I had money and I didn’t want to lose it. No matter the cost.
It was who I was now. On the surface, at least.
A door opened at the front of the room and a Changeling stepped out.
“S’lec-Quos will see you now,” it said.
I followed the Changeling down the endless hallways. It still surprised me to see them adopting their natural form. They could mimic a Titan to perfection, making it difficult even for their closest friends and family to recognize the difference. But there were certain tells if you knew where to look.
But there was something interesting about Changelings that I’d recently learned. The further up the social rankings they were, the less likely they were to adopt a shape different from their natural one. No pretending, no hiding. Not unless it suited their own interest, of course.
The servant leading me adopted his original shape. He wore the same hard gray-brown outer shell of his insect-like species, with scales that could easily shift and slide into place. He had eight unblinking black eyes. His legs were long and stick thin. He stood head and shoulders above a Titan.
He wore a translator strip across his throat. It was the only way to understand other alien species unless you were willing to spend years studying their language.
The Changeling servant shoved a pair of doors and held them open for me to step through. It was the throne room. A series of pillars ran down either side of me as I marched toward the throne. On each of them, as I had studied as a kid when I played with the young prince down these very halls, I had learned the name and location of each of the major mining facilities throughout the galaxy.
