The Crystal Warriors Series Bundle

by Maree Anderson

“You want to tell her, or shall I?” Mike asked Kyan.

  Kyan sighed. “I will tell her.”

  “Better you than me,” Mike muttered.

  Ruby glared at them. Odds on it was a pathetic attempt at a glare, but it was all she could summon. She pressed a fisted hand to her churning stomach, her mind leaping to conclusions—all of them dire. Omigod. What was wrong? She wished they’d get the bad news over with and put her out of her misery.

  “Ruby.”

  His voice, the way he said her name, sent little shivery frissons up and down her spine. Lust warred with her instinct to worry. But it was Kyan. He was gorgeous. No surprise that lust won, and the churning in her stomach morphed to a coil of heat and wanting. “Yes, Kyan?”

  He dropped his gaze and played with another tube of sugar.

  She suppressed a sigh. Looked like she’d have to coax whatever it was out of him. “I won’t bite you or anything.” Mmm. Maybe a little nibble on his ear. Or a little bit lower down….

  Ruby. Focus!

  “You and I, Ruby. We are life-mates. You have been chosen as my woman.”

  If she’d had a mouthful of coffee right then she’d have spat it all over herself. “Oh, please. Pull the other one—it’s got bells on.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Mike said.

  She blinked at her brother. “Not you, too?”

  “’Tis true, Ruby,” Kyan said. “And within four of your weeks, we will be subjected to a testing. If we do not pass this testing, at best I will again be condemned by the Crystal Guardian to the eternal torture of my kyanite prison.”

  He paused, looking so grim she felt chilled by a sudden presentiment. She shrugged it off, refusing to believe it. This was complete codswallop, right? Insane drivel.

  “And at worst?” she finally managed to splutter.

  “Begging your pardon?”

  “You said ‘at best’ you’ll be condemned to… to… torture and stuff. So what’s ‘at worst’?”

  “At worst, the Crystal Guardian will destroy me.”

  ~~~

  Chapter Five

  Ruby studied Kyan, waiting for a teasing smile to turn up those tempting lips of his. But it never came. His face glowed with utter conviction.

  Holy shit. He truly believed what he was telling her.

  She glanced at Mike. Surely this had to be some elaborate ruse he’d cooked up to have some fun at her expense. Mike enjoyed a good joke.

  But Mike wasn’t smiling, either. That, more than anything else, worried Ruby. Her desire to laugh strangled and died.

  “It’s true, Rubes,” Mike said. “Chalcedony Laureano was tested by the Crystal Guardian four weeks to the day she first met Wulf. They’d been an item, but they split over a misunderstanding. She thought he’d died in the fire that destroyed her dance studio, but then she realized he’d been imprisoned in his crystal again. So she tracked down this old Crystal Guardian dude, and found a way to rescue Wulf. She and Wulf have been together ever since.”

  “Really.”

  “Really. And turns out Chalcedony’s mother went through the same sort of experience with a guy called Malach—Malachite. Only she chose not to bond with him, so Malach ended up back in his malachite crystal, at the mercy of this Crystal Guardian again. The Guardian’s the one who cast the spell on Wulf and his men a few centuries ago, and imprisoned them all in their namesake crystals, by the way. And she—Chalcedony’s mother, I mean—believes the Guardian destroyed his crystal, and him along with it.”

  “But… but….” Her heart was leaping about like it wanted to burst from her chest and run away to hide somewhere. Good idea. She desperately wanted to run away and hide, too. Instead, she was glued to her seat.

  Kyan took her hand. Desire zinged through her veins, softening the hard edges of her determination to disbelieve this outlandish tale. She stared into his eyes, caught by what-ifs and maybes, losing herself in their earnest blue depths.

  Perhaps touch was the key because somehow Ruby was given access to Kyan’s mind. And as she drifted through his thoughts and memories she saw the truth—or at least, the truth as Kyan believed it to be.

  But a kernel of disbelief that could not be swayed by a handsome face and earnest eyes had settled in her gut. She could not bring herself to accept that such a tale could possibly be true.

  How could it be?

  And the instant she formed the thought, some unnamed force set out to prove her wrong. Before she could blink, she was transported back to yesterday, at the point in time when she first touched the crystal Jules had given her. But this time, there was more to the vision.

  This time, Ruby was a silent witness to it all.

  ~~~

  The old man untied the linen and spread it out on the ground. He placed the eleven large gemstones in a circle, with himself at the center point. He was the focus, a man named after a crystal, a man who’d dedicated his life to learning how to harness the power of such stones. He struggled to his feet to await his fate.

  The Styrian commander, a warrior called Wulf, spotted the old man barring his way. He reined in his battle mount and raised a hand to halt his men. He quirked a brow at the old man, then barked a scornful laugh. “A greybeard who should be a-bed, nursing his aching joints. This is the best defense you offer.”

  A small figure hurtled toward the old man, momentarily distracting him.

  “Amie, no!” The girl’s mother lunged as if to go after her, but was forcibly restrained by the other women.

  The little girl skidded to a halt beside the old man. Hands on hips, she faced down the fearsome warrior. “Don’t speak to me grandda’ like that, ye big bully! Go ’way and leave us be!”

  Kyan snickered. He admired the girl for facing down Wulf. A pity such courage would go unrewarded.

  “Silence!” Wulf snarled. “The girl-child is comely,” he said to the old man. “Too, she shows no fear. When she comes of age, I will honor her courage by bidding for her on the Choosing Block. You show courage also, old man, so to appease this child of your blood I will spare your life.”

  “My life is already forfeit. But not to you Lord Keeper Wulfenite.”

  Wulf’s eyes widened momentarily before he shuttered them with an emotionless stare. He kneed his mount forward but the beast shied back, forcing him to haul back on the reins. His men shifted restlessly behind him. “Much good knowing my true name will do you, old man,” he said. “If you insist on resisting us then so be it. The earth will drink your foolish old blood as readily as it does that of younger men.”

  The old man merely smiled. He bent and whispered something to the little girl, and she dashed back to her mother. Then he raised his hands to the skies and began to chant. “Verily the crystal for which thee be named/ Shalt form the prison in which thee be bound/ To atone the sins for which thee be blamed/ ’Til thee be blessed and thy true love be found.”

  Wulf threw back his head and laughed. “Blessed? What nonsense is this, old man? Mayhap you are addle-brained, yes? Warriors such as we have no need of blessings. And as for true love? Bah. ’Tis naught but a woman’s fantasy.”

  The crystals surrounding the old man began to glow. Black clouds scudded across a rapidly darkening sky. An ominous crackle of lightening haloed beams of light—each a different, unearthly hue—shooting up from the gems.

  “What sorcery is this?” Malach, Wulf’s second in command, demanded.

  Pieter raised his arms to the sky. “Kyanite, Malachite, Shattuckite, Okenite, Danburite,” he intoned. “The stone thee be named for shall bind thee. I, Pietersite, bind thee.”

  The heavens answered with a rumble. Foreboding stabbed Kyan, and he saw his own fear reflected in the faces of his fellow warriors.

  But it was too late to take action. The sorcerer’s conjured void sucked him into an absolute blackness that enshrouded his body and paralyzed his soul. He was severed from the world he knew, powerless, imprisoned in an eternal absence of everything. Deprived of any and all sensation.
Sightless, deaf and mute. All that he was, all that he could be—his very essence—was held in stasis.

  With only his own thoughts for solace, he retreated into an inescapable cycle of hatred and self-loathing. He knew this place-that-was-no-place was his punishment. He had feared this place as a child, then laughingly discounted it as a grown man. It was merely a tale to frighten children. It did not exist.

  Now he realized how wrong he’d been, for he knew exactly where he was. Halja. He was in—

  “Hell.” Ruby could feel her body shuddering, her heart pounding. Adrenaline surged through her, prodding her to launch herself from her seat and run—run until she escaped the horror of the vision. But she was not strong enough to break free, and so she remained rooted to the spot, fighting a rising panic that threatened to sweep her away. And then, through the sensationless void, she felt something. A slight physical sensation, the merest fleeting touch of skin on skin.

  There it was again, that touch, calling her. And then she was back in the here and now of the busy cafeteria, with Kyan’s hand clasping hers.

  “Ruby!” His worried gaze searched her face.

  She stared at him, dazed by the anguish etching his features, the remembered terror clouding his eyes. He thumbed moisture from her cheek. She blinked, and realized her face was wet with tears.

  Clarity smacked her upside the head. She knew what type of crystal sat swathed in tissue-paper, all but forgotten on her phone table. She would bet her life it was a kyanite crystal—or rather crystals, since she’d broken it in two. That crystal and Kyan had to be linked somehow. It couldn’t be coincidence that he was named after the very stone Jules had given her. Or that he’d appeared on her doorstep immediately after she’d had the first vision and the crystal had broken.

  Everything he’d told Mike, everything he’d told her, was true.

  “How could you stand it, Kyan?” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “That endless nothing?”

  “I do not know how I survived it. Only that now, for however long, I am free.”

  Ruby chanted words that formed in her mind. “Verily the crystal for which thee be named/ Shalt form the prison in which thee be bound/ To atone the sins for which thee be blamed/ ’Til thee be blessed and thy true love be found.”

  It was a spell. The spell—the one the Crystal Guardian had cast. Unthinking, she uttered the fateful last words that had condemned the man before her to a centuries-long torment. “Kyanite, the stone thee be named for shall bind thee. I, Pietersite, bind thee.”

  Kyan flinched back as though she’d struck him. He bowed his head, covering his face in his hands. Remembering or perhaps reliving the past.

  Ruby knew the words of that spell—curse!—would be forever etched into her memory.

  Mike uttered a strangled noise and Ruby glanced up to see him gaping at her. “How—? How could you know that spell? Chalcedony only revealed it to me on the phone not half an hour ago.”

  “I-I don’t know. I just… saw it.”

  “I know.” Kyan’s hands muffled his words. He looked up, slowly, pinning Ruby with his electric gaze. “The words still resound in my head centuries after I heard them uttered. Ruby and I, we are bound now, profoundly connected in some way. That is how she knows.”

  Ruby couldn’t bear the intensity of his gaze, the remembered suffering etched in the lines bracketing his mouth. But the hope dawning in his eyes held her transfixed. He’d been thrown a lifeline: her. She was his permanent ticket out of the crystalline hell he’d been sprung from.

  How ironic. All her life she’d dreamed of a boyfriend who was handsome and built like… well… Kyan. Someone who loved her for who she was, not what she looked like. Someone who’d not have his head turned by some big-boobed stick insect swaying down the street in a short skirt and crop-top. Someone who was happy with her as she was—who’d not pretend to be happy with her, then insist on trying to change her.

  And here he was. Kyan. The man of her dreams. A man who needed her to save him from a fate worse than death. How was that for a cliché? As R.N.Z.A.F. pilots liked to say: what a cluster-fuck.

  If he’d come to her willingly, somehow managed to convince her he wasn’t playing a cruel joke and that he truly wanted to be with her, it would be different. But this? He needed her. That was the only reason he was sticking around. Otherwise he’d have settled for giving the Birthday Girl a kiss, getting his kit off and getting some cheap thrills into the bargain, and leaving her with nothing but the memory of that kiss.

  “How about it, Rubes?” Mike interrupted her little pity party.

  “How about what?” she said.

  “Are you going to help him?”

  God. This so wasn’t fair. Tears stung her eyes and misery lodged in her heart. Why couldn’t fate have dealt her a normal man she had at least a chance in hell of a happy ever after with?

  She wouldn’t cry though, not in front of Kyan and her brother. Not now. She pushed back the tears and turned misery into anger-spiked sarcasm. “You, my rational, too-smart-for-his-own-good brother, believe all this stuff? This Chalcedony woman could be a bloody psycho for all we know.”

  “I believe her. She sounded totally sincere, Rubes.”

  “Yeah. So do most psychos.”

  “You’ve got a valid point, Rubes.” Mike’s serious expression turned sheepish, but only for a moment. He wasn’t going to give up trying to convince her without a fight. “But when I spoke to Wulf, that sealed it for me. Wulf described being imprisoned in the crystal and what he described exactly matches Kyan’s experience. Plus, Chalcedony was given a wulfenite crystal by the Crystal Guardian. And from what Wulf can figure out, he appeared immediately after she dropped the crystal and it broke in two. Kyan and I found the crystal you’d been given, Ruby and—”

  “And it’s broken, too. Yeah. I’m well aware of that.”

  “Can you remember what happened immediately afterward?”

  “Oh come on, Mike. I dropped it. It broke. I opened the front door and Kyan was there. But that doesn’t prove anything.” She didn’t believe that, not really. But she wasn’t prepared to let Mike know that. Or at least, not yet.

  “Doesn’t it?” he countered.

  “I can’t believe you’re so ready to embrace all this hocus-pocus, Mike. You’re a trained medic for chrissake! How can you believe these wild tales of warriors from another world, surviving for centuries magically imprisoned in crystals? It’s absurd.”

  “I believe in magic,” he said quietly. “Every time I witness someone recover from an accident that by all rights should have killed them, I believe. And when I bring back someone who’s not been breathing on their own for far too long, and I know they should be brain damaged but they completely recover, it only reinforces my belief. I’ve seen too many miracles, too many things I can’t explain. How could I not believe in magic?”

  “But this—?” She shook her head. “This is… fucking unbelievable.”

  Kyan finally broke his silence. “Yet here I am, Ruby, a Styrian warrior not of your world. And I am as real as you are. You have seen where I have been imprisoned—seen too, the spell that captured me being cast. You have heard the sorcerer speak the words that bound me.”

  She nodded.

  “Then how can you not believe? Help me, Ruby. Please. I need you.”

  She blew out a long sigh and slumped. He needed her. She understood that. But what about what she needed?

  What about afterward, when they’d passed this testing shit and Kyan had his life back to live however he chose? She’d have to be thick as two short planks to believe he’d stick around. This was real life, not a fairy tale.

  She examined every inch of Kyan’s strikingly handsome face. He was a babe, all right. The sort of man women conjured up in their wildest dreams. But he wasn’t a dream. He was real. And he was here, now, begging her to save him from the big, bad Crystal Guardian’s clutches.

  Ruby folded. Even though she knew she would get hurt, sh
e gave in. She would play this thing through to the end. And for now, having him need her was enough. It would have to be. “Don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  Kyan and Mike exchanged relieved looks.

  “Yeah, yeah, Mike. Like you didn’t know I’d be a sucker for a handsome man begging for my help. God. I despise being a sure thing.”

  Not even Mike had an answer to that.

  The orders arrived and the guys chowed down. Ruby waited ’til Kyan finished his large slice of chicken pie and pasta salad. “There’s just one thing I’d like to know, Kyan.”

  “Anything, Ruby.”

  “What on earth did you and Wulf and the rest do to make that old guy, Pieter, hate you so much? Must’ve been pretty bad for him to condemn you for eternity.”

  Mike choked on his coffee.

  Kyan stiffened. His face blanked until he looked inhuman, like a perfectly rendered replica of a human being—just as Jules had commented last night. Hard. Implacable. Capable of anything.

  He claimed to be a warrior. Ruby could imagine how well that vocation would fit him. She wondered how many men he’d killed.

  “Let’s talk about that later, Rubes.” Mike stood. He crumpled his serviette and tossed it on the tabletop. “Better go buy that bike, eh? Especially since you want to start your training bright and early tomorrow. C’mon, you two, let’s make tracks.”

  Ruby played along by groaning. “Can’t believe I’m going to put myself through this. Bike ride before breakfast, swimming at lunchtime, and a run after work? I’m going to kill myself.”

  She knew Mike had deliberately diverted her from her question. He must have discovered something important, something he and Kyan didn’t want her to find out. She let it slide for now. She’d bale them up about The Big Secret later.

  And one of them would tell her the truth or she’d refuse to play the game. Simple. All it would take would be a threat that she wouldn’t make any effort to pass the testing and Kyan would have to stew in his crystal for another few hundred years….