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longer seaworthy and filling with water.
    I glanced over my shoulder, barely able to make out the silhouettes of the four men with buckets, frantically battling the invading saltwater flowing over the edge of the ship.
    Yes, a complete waste of time. Didn’t these poor bastards realize that the gods did not wish us to live? We’d been at sea for well over a month, our captors in search of new lands to plunder, I assumed. But those men were greedy fools. The drinking water was gone. The food stores were nonexistent. What little fish we caught wasn’t enough to sustain so many men. But every time I entertained giving up, I remembered what I carried.
    I placed my bloody, numb hand over the leather pouch around my neck. Inside was what looked like a plain rock—which was the reason my captors allowed me to keep it. The rock, however, was the key to bringing back my dead twin brother. The one I beheaded upon his request, something I regretted with all my heart.
    I closed my eyes and said a silent prayer to the gods. If this is my last night on earth, I beg of you to see that this stone is returned to Mia. Please, it is all I ask.
    I never did learn how the stone worked, but I knew that the love of my brother’s life, Mia, was a Seer with powerful gifts. Before my brother died by my hand, she had bound his soul to this earth so he could not leave it, using the rock so that one day they could find each other again. How? I did not know. I only knew that I had taken the stone by accident when I’d been forced to leave Minoa—ironically, Mia’s doing. She did not want me to die at the hands of our people, who rioted over the loss of my brother. So she used her gifts to force my guards—men from a particular bloodline who’d guarded our kings for centuries—to take me away. But within days of leaving, I discovered the rock hidden inside a basket used to carry my valuables. I fought the guards tooth and nail to return to Minoa, but they were under Mia’s commands, unable to do anything but obey her orders to take me far from the island. They were killed by the men who were now my captors.
    I laughed like a madman under my breath. You gods must truly despise me , I thought, the rain pelting my raw, sun-chapped face.
    The man to my side, a farmer from the mainland, who once had the muscles and strength of an ox but now resembled a skeleton, slid his hand to my shoulder. At first, I expected him to spew yet another ridiculous lecture about hope, but I quickly realized he was simply trying to hold on to anything he could.
    Our ship capsized.
    The gods truly do hate me. But why?
     
    ~~~
     
    My first thought when I came to was that I was dead. However, the dead didn’t feel their faces and bare chests burning from the hot sun, their ribs didn’t throb with multiple cracks, and their lungs didn’t spew saltwater and blood.
    But the beautiful topless woman with long black hair, large brown eyes, and creamy dark skin, kneeling over me, had to be sent from the heavens. I’d never seen such a lovely creature.
    “Finally,” I mumbled, “the gods are doing something kind for me.”
    The woman spoke in a strange tongue, her voice filled with sweetness as she lovingly stroked my face with her soft hand, as if trying to comfort me.
    But the moment I heard strange male voices screaming off in the distance, I questioned my assumption about being dead. So then where the hell was I?
    Within seconds, a group of extremely short men with deep dark skin and strange black symbols painted over their bodies showed up and began poking me with sticks.
    “Leave me be,” I said. I now know I must’ve looked like someone from a faraway planet. With my height—considerably tall, even by my people’s standards—light blue eyes and a black beard that matched my hair, I was probably the first Caucasian they’d ever seen. They kept jabbing at me to see if I would bite. Of course, I was far too weak for that. And before I knew it, they were