Opal's Wish: Book Four of The Crystal Warriors Series

by Maree Anderson

  OPAL’S WISH

  Book Four of The Crystal Warriors Series

  By Maree Anderson

  Eight-year-old Sera accidentally frees Danbur from his crystal and bonds with him. Danbur now has no chance to break his curse. Worse, the child’s mother, Opal, apparently wants nothing to do with him—or any man. Then Opal’s past puts Sera in jeopardy and she’s forced to turn to Danbur for help. But what Opal doesn’t realize is that the clock is ticking, and Danbur’s time is about to run out.

  REVIEWS

  “Pure indulgent escapism. Normally I’m quite patient & will wait for a book to go down a bit before purchasing but not this time. Totally hooked & waiting on the next one (which should happen given the mention of more crystals in Pieter’s possession). Slight twist in this one as our Warrior is released by the daughter of his intended life mate but it turns out to be a blessing in disguise. It also proves that Pieter is as much a victim of the curse he cast as the men he now tries to help. Really can’t wait for news of the next Warriors release. Proof that I can multi-task too, housework whilst reading, not easy but it happened!”

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Seer’s Hope Excerpt

  Other Books by Maree Anderson

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  The barely discernible whisper invading his mind might once have filled him with hope. Now he felt nothing at all. Hope was pointless when such whispers heralded the onset of madness. This was Halja, after all—the afterlife awaiting those who displeased the gods. A place devoid of hope.

  The temperature of his prison was a constant lukewarm. Or perhaps, blood-warm was a more appropriate term for a warrior to use. In his past life, Danbur could never have imagined a time when he would yearn for the kind of searing heat that crisped skin and threatened to sizzle eyeballs from sockets, or cold that spiked the marrow of bones and made them throb and ache. Now, after centuries of relentless sameness, he would have embraced either. Suffering the rigors of heatstroke or frostbite would have been proof he remained physically whole—that his physical body hadn’t been destroyed.

  Alas, he was afforded no such solace.

  Halja’s hue was constant, too. Black on black on black—a black so viscous and vast, it made no difference whether his eyelids were wide open or tightly shuttered. Not that he could tell either way. Yes, Halja had proven vastly dissimilar to even the darkest of tales and most terrifying nightmares but as Danbur had quickly learned, stasis, too, was a form of torture. A torture that was perpetual and pitiless.

  In the beginning, he’d instructed his brain to work various muscles even though he could neither see nor feel them moving. Mere hours had passed—or perhaps days, he had no way of knowing—before that stubborn determination had waned to merely blinking his eyelids and attempting to count each blink. And that had proven a futile effort when he could feel neither the tiny muscles working to squeeze his eyelids shut, nor the brush of eyelashes sweeping his skin.

  And, as the time passed, fear and despair morphed to acceptance, and finally, to no emotion at all. He existed, in some form or another, in a place outside of time. He was deaf, blind, dumb, numb—insensate in the purest meaning of the word. Nothing would change that. Nothing could change th—

  There it was again. And this time his sluggish brain made sense of what he was hearing.

  That he could hear anything at all was a gift beyond price. But, sweet Mother of all Gods, ’twas not some random sound but a word. And, as the whisper increased to a murmur, he realized this word was more than mere letters strung together to represent a thing or concept or place. ’Twas a word of profound import. A word that flooded his body or mind, or whatever essence remained of him, with an emotion he’d believed forever lost like corpse-ash dispersed by the merciless desert winds of his home world.

  That whispered word was his true name, the name bestowed upon him when he’d been admitted to the ranks of warriors hard and cold and implacable as the crystals for which they were named.

  Danburite. The three syllables resounded over and over in his mind. And, as the wonder of hearing his name engulfed him, he became conscious of another miracle. His eyelids must have been open, for how else could he have witnessed the smothering, soul-eating blackness lessening, silvering to a hazy gray mist. He blinked. And knuckled his eye sockets—realized at that moment he could feel his knuckles firmly pressing into the sockets.

  He held his hands out in front of his face, saw the tremors as they shook, and felt no shame for his weakness. Yes. Yes! Gods above and below, those were his fingers… attached to hands… arms. He steeled himself for a downward glance, and the relief at seeing his body intact would have brought him to his knees had he not still hung weightless and helpless in this cursed crystalline prison.

  Danburite.

  The utterance had more substance now. It was distinct and real, as though phantom lips murmured his name.

  He felt his heart kick in his chest. Before he could do more than gasp at the sensation, saliva pooled in his mouth. He swallowed, relishing the alien sensation of moisture lubricating the tissues of his throat. A wonder, indeed. And the warrior part of him—the pragmatist who carried within him the knowledge that one day his strength and agility and prowess would fail him at some crucial moment—stomped on the hope flowering within him and waited, loose-limbed and relaxed but vigilant still, for some new torture to be revealed.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  Danburite! His name was uttered again, this time in a piping voice so clear he clapped his hands over his ears for fear his eardrums would rupture. And then….

  He was catapulted into another world.

  More specifically, a small room.

  A female voice, chanting loudly and somewhat melodically, assailed his eardrums. He caught the words “last Friday night” but the rest of the lyrics were almost incomprehensible. The din made it difficult to concentrate as he scanned his surroundings, squinting in the pink glow emanating from the globe hung from the ceiling of the room. The hand that had instinctively sought his non-existent sword dropped back to his side as he straightened, and he expelled a long, slow breath. So far as prisons went this was… unexpected.

  The walls of the room had been painted the palest of pinks. Swathes of filmy material a shade darker than the walls hung from rods over the windows. Fanciful creatures peered out at him from the glossy artworks adorning the walls. Here, a white steed with a single graceful horn sprouting from its forehead. There, dainty winged creatures perched atop spotted fungi.

  The bed pressed up against the wall sported a ruffled cover in a darker shade of pink, and a haphazard pile of cushions in various shades of the same color. The small chest of drawers beside the bed had been lacquered in a white so bright Danbur knew he would see himself reflected in its sheen if he cared to look. A shaggy circular rug—also pink—graced wall-to-wall threadbare carpet in an unredeemable
shade of brown. The carpet was the one jarring note in this veritable confection of a bedchamber.

  He guessed this to be a child’s domain. A girl-child of course. No boy-child would covet such feminine fripperies. Not that Danbur knew anything about little girls. The women of his world birthed only boys. And the females snatched in a desperate attempt to replenish his race were confined to those of child-bearing age. Or had been. Only the gods knew how much time had passed…. And whether his people had flourished, or gone the way of the giant feline whose bones he’d once discovered in a cave.

  The chanting issued from a strange device sitting atop the chest of drawers. A wondrous thing! Even if he didn’t care for the music currently blaring from it.

  He was reaching for the device when a sound akin to the wheeze of a sword-smith’s bellows cut through his curiosity. He pivoted on his heel, gaze scanning the room for the source of that sound.

  There. At the foot of the bed. A child, her arms wrapped around drawn-up knees, head bent to expose a vulnerable, pale-skinned nape. She wore a soft, berry-colored shirt and loose matching pants. Her face was obscured by a fuzzy mop of hair the vibrant red of a flame tree in full bloom.

  She hadn’t yet noticed his unannounced arrival. Unsurprising when her slight body shuddered from the violence of her choked-off gasping sobs.

  He approached her warily, treating her as he would any wounded animal. Even week-old fennec cubs could inflict a sharp nip to the unwary. He squatted beside her and rested a hand on her nape, prepared to wait patiently for her to realize she was no longer alone. But the warmth of her skin seeped into his palm, the sensation so unexpected after feeling nothing at all for so very long that he expelled a hissing breath.

  She glanced up, her mouth slack with shock.

  Danbur snatched his hand back, but it was too late to escape the regard of pale green alien eyes that were far too big for her face.

  Gods above and below. What kind of world was this?

  And then a distant memory spooled through his mind. There’d been a woman—an older female, many years past her prime—who’d set herself up as an apothecary. The first time he’d visited her shop he’d been fascinated by the bizarre contraption she’d worn perched on the bridge of her nose. She’d been flattered by his curiosity, happy to explain how the lenses made things larger and therefore easier for her to see clearly.

  What had she called the contraption again?

  Ah, yes. Spectacles. He huffed a bark of astonished laughter that he could recall such a thing after all he’d endured.

  Another shaky sob reached his ears. The child’s freckled, tear-stained face was screwed up in a fearful expression. And Danbur’s triumph over having recalled the word soured in his belly. She was afraid. Of him.

  He tensed, awaiting the inevitable loud shriek. Instead, a whooping sound issued from her throat. He narrowed his gaze to slits, shutting out the alien-ness of his surroundings to focus on her, and her alone.

  As she inhaled, her spine bowed. She had to fight for each breath.

  He had observed this before—a child struggling to breathe, the lingering weakness in the boy’s chest worsened by the harsh chill of a desert night. The memories flickered through his mind. The camp’s Healer had tossed some herbal concoction into a pot of boiling water, and made the boy breathe the vapors until the tightness in his chest eased. The most pressing thing was to calm this child down and keep her relaxed as possible while he sought help.

  “’Tis all right, little one,” he crooned, glancing around the room, searching out anything that might be of use. “Be calm. Breathe with me now. In. And out. In. And out.”

  She tried her best, but her efforts were met with another wheeze. Her flushed face turned a deeper shade of scarlet. Magnified by the spectacles he could plainly see panic and fear roiling in her eyes.

  He scooped her up and propped her over his shoulder, rubbing firm circles across her spine as he pivoted full-circle. But there was nothing of use in this too-pretty, too-feminine room. Unwelcome helplessness shrouded him. He stifled the desire to punch something, to rail at the cruelty of gods who would release him from Halja to witness an innocent child’s suffering.

  She nuzzled his ear. When she spoke it was the barest croak. “Inhaler.”

  Inhale-er? “I do not understand,” he said, frustration sharpening his voice. “Is there a place I can heat water?”

  “Baaa—” wheeze “—thh—” wheeze “—room.”

  He’d exited the sleeping room before he’d consciously registered her words. Of course. This abode must have some sort of bathing area. Although a cooking hearth might be better for heating water—

  “That— One.” She managed to lift a hand to indicate a door before another ineffectual attempt to catch her breath wracked her slight body.

  He strode to the door, shouldered it open, and halted. His stomach performed a lazy somersault and then lay leaden in his belly. The sleeping room had been shock enough, but this?

  He kicked the door shut with one booted foot and approached the tub. In or beside? Beside, he decided, and lowered his arse until he perched on the edge. Setting his jaw, he transferred the child to his lap. She lay limply in the crook of his shoulder, exhausted by her efforts to breathe.

  Silver spigots—at least, he presumed them to be spigots—jutted from the wall above the tub. One sported a faded red circle, the other blue. Danbur ground his teeth. He was a crystal warrior—elite among his kind. He would not allow this… this… minor setback to defeat him. He twisted the spigot with the red circle, and grunted with satisfaction when it belched water. A swipe of his fingers beneath the stream confirmed it was warming, and within seconds, the stream was hot enough to waft a curling tendril of steam toward him.

  He rubbed the child’s back and chanted his demands for her to breathe in and out, while the small room filled with steam. When it got too hot, he twisted the spigot with the blue circle. As he’d hoped, the stream of cold water cooled the steam somewhat.

  Time passed. His world shrank to the negligible weight of the child in his arms and the hair-raising whoops that punctuated her efforts to breathe. He’d thought himself beyond petitioning gods. They’d not deigned to answer his prayers to be mercifully put down, as a man would grant mercy to a mount with a broken leg. But for this innocent he would try one last time. And as he prayed, he rocked the child in his lap and wondered, despairing, what he could offer his gods that they hadn’t already taken from him.

  At last it appeared the Mother had chosen to be merciful, for the child’s breathing eased… and slowed until it synchronized with his so perfectly, Danbur could almost believe that he and the child were somehow connected, and that he was breathing for her.

  After a while she sighed and her breathy exhalation was echoed with his own hiss of relief that the crisis had past.

  She peered up at him through the steam-fogged lenses of her spectacles.

  “Can you breathe without effort now?”

  His question was answered with a nod.

  “Shall I turn off the water?”

  Another nod.

  He shut off the spigot, marveling anew at the efficiency of such an invention, even as he despised a world where guardians had seen fit to leave this young one alone to cope with such a serious affliction. If he’d appeared in her room a few minutes later….

  The child wriggled restlessly in his lap but it was difficult to gauge the extent of her recovery when he couldn’t fully discern her expression. He plucked the spectacles from her pert little nose, intending to wipe the lenses with the square of cloth he’d spied hanging over the tub, but her sharply indrawn breath and the stiffening of her body stilled him mid-stretch. “Forgive me,” he said. “I meant only to clean them and return them to you. I should have asked your permission before removing such precious possessions.”

  “It’s okay,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

  Poor little chick. Her battle to breathe had exhausted her. “May I?�
� he asked.

  She nodded, and he snagged the nubby cloth… which did not prove the best for wiping such delicate things as spectacles, but was far superior than using his fingers.

  He perched the cleaned lenses carefully atop the bridge of her nose, and hid his wince when she cringed. “There is no reason to be afraid, little one. I will not hurt you.” He fisted his spare hand on his breastbone. “My word on it.”

  Those rare green eyes peered at him through the thick lenses. She scrambled from his lap to settle cross-legged on the floor with her back against the wall. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said, folding her arms over her chest and thrusting out her lower lip. But this brave declaration was somewhat ruined by a hiccup and a tear tracking down her cheek.

  So courageous. He favored her with a short nod to convey his respect.

  Her lower lip wobbled. “When we were back in my room you laughed.” She swiped her cheek with the back of a hand. “Is it ’coz I look funny?”

  A fist grabbed his heart and squeezed. And something—perhaps the same intuition that served him so well during battle—told him to be wary how he phrased his answer. A careless word could wound far more efficiently than a finely honed blade.

  “I laughed with the relief of finally understanding what I was seeing,” he said, speaking slowly and carefully, infusing his words with truth and willing her to believe. “And I laughed because I realized I had no cause for fear.”

  She blinked tear-spiked lashes and a tiny frown pleated her forehead. “You were scared?”

  He nodded.

  “But you’re so big!”

  His lips curved at her awed tone.

  “And… and….”

  “Black?” he supplied, wondering if dark-skinned people were a rarity here—wherever “here” might conceivably be.

  “Duh,” she said, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “I was gonna say muscley.”

  Apparently black skin did not unnerve this child. Good. A useful piece of information. “I would share a secret with you, young one,” he said, hoping if he gained her trust she would reveal more. “But you mustn’t tell a soul.”