Read Silver's Captive for Free Online

was bleeding. Alarm slammed through me when I saw the state of his condition. I leaped off the couch and rushed towards him just as he toppled over and fell to the floor with a thud.
    Dropping to my knees beside him, I hesitated to touch him. He looked hurt all over. His back was covered in wounds that included knife slashes and burns. He had tears in his clothing that showed the tough skin underneath that was a mottled green and looked almost scaled.
    “Tell me how to help you,” I said.
    A deep groan came from him, a sound of pain.
    “Arr, tell me how to help you. What do you need?” I touched him gently on a spot that wasn’t injured.
    One slitted eye opened to look at me, the silver of his iris swirling in the soft light of his quarters.
    “I need to shift,” he told me in a rasping voice.
    I turned to look at the strange tub he’d been in when I first woke in his quarters.
    “Come on, then. I’m going to need you to help. I can’t lift you.”
    He pushed up with his arms, a hiss of pain coming from him. I grasped him under the arm and helped him as best I could without touching any of his wounds. Slowly, I managed to get him to his feet.
    Holy hell he was heavy.
    We staggered over to the tub, his weight over my shoulder pressing down on me, pushing down heavily on my body. He dropped gracelessly into the tub, almost pulling me in with him. One of his arms and a leg hung out of the tub. Carefully, to avoid hurting him any further, I lifted his limbs into the metal tub.
    Panting from my exertions, I stood back and watched as, with a deep groan, he slowly melted before my eyes. First, his clothes melted into his body, exposing the tough green hide of his chest and shoulders, the thickly roped arms with little pointed protrusions that ran down the length of them. The colour of his body and the textures of his skin slowly receded until he was that swirling silver colour all over. Then his body just collapsed, turning to liquid silver in the tub, swirling and moving, rolling on itself before slowly quieting down.
    I stared down at the beautiful mass of silver, fascinated despite my misgivings about this man, not to mention about what he was. It wasn’t that he was completely alien to anything I’d come across before in my life. It wasn’t that he could change forms and become something else. It was the fact that he stole for a living. He took what other people had worked hard for and made it his with no thought for the lives he might be affecting.
    How could I reconcile our differences? What he did went against everything I’d been raised to believe, everything my parents and then my aunt had taught me about what was right and good in the universe.
    I sat down on the edge of the tub feeling more confused and alone than I had in years. My initial alarm at seeing him hurt had given way to worry. Was he going to be okay? What had happened on the other ship for him to return so badly hurt? If he was hurt this badly, how must the rest of his crew have fared?
    Time seemed to stand still as I sat watching over him. Nobody came to check on him. The ship was silent, even the engines. I didn’t know how much time passed before I started to wonder what that swirling silver liquid felt like. Would it be warm or cool? Would he feel it if I dipped my hand in and swirled it around?
    My hand was reaching towards him before I realised it. I snatched it back and held my tight fist against my breast. Jumping up, I moved away from the temptation he presented.
    I didn’t understand all the things I felt for this man. My emotions where he was concerned had me confused.
    I moved about his quarters looking at the little things that made it his space. I was sneaking glances every few minutes back at the tub and the swirling silver liquid inside. He drew me like metal shavings to a magnet. I tried hard to study my surroundings, but my gaze kept being drawn back to him.
    That was, until a small sculpture drew my attention on a shelf near