An elderly man, dressed in jeans and boots, with an incongruously bright gold scarf tucked into the neck of his white shirt, shambled toward her. And as he passed by her, the memory of where and when she’d seen him before sliced through her brain.
Her birthday party. She’d seen him from the window.
“Hey!” She turned on her heel and limped after him. “Hey! Please stop. I’d like to ask you something.”
Even when she’d finally caught him, he paid her no mind whatsoever, seeming oblivious to her puffing along beside him, trying to match his stride. It was as though she did not exist.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I really need to ask you something important.”
When he still didn’t respond, she was goaded into grabbing his arm and forcing him to a halt. Only then did he finally condescend to notice her.
A knowing smile quirked his lips. “Yes, Garnet Ruby, I imagine you do need to ask me something important. But first, I have something important to show you.”
He disappeared.
No, that wasn’t right. She disappeared. Well, she was definitely somewhere, just no longer on the footpath near her home. She’d been transported to someplace else entirely—a place she’d never visited before. She recognized it just the same. She’d seen it in a dream.
~~~
“I have to do this, Ruby,” Kyan said. “It is our custom. I cannot remain mated to a woman who is incapable of bearing children.”
Shadows played upon the lightly billowing silken walls of the tent. From her bed of brightly colored brocade pillows, Ruby gazed up at the implacable face of the man she loved. “Kyan. Don’t do this. Please! We can try again. I carried this child longer than the others. Maybe the next one will be to term. I—”
“No.”
She heard the wind whistling over the dunes. She recognized that sound. The Storm Season had begun. Outside, many days ride via the swiftest mount, a mighty storm was brewing. It was newly birthed and tremulous, not yet a danger to the denizens of the Shifting Sands fief. But it would become so. Soon.
“Kyan, please!” She swallowed her tears, knowing he’d see them as lack of control, a weakness.
He raked his gaze over her. His tightly clenched jaw, and a tiny tic just beneath his left eye, were the only visible sign he found her insistence on pleading her case rather than accepting her fate distasteful.
“Of what use is a woman who cannot bear children?” he said. “My people are a dying race. Children are our future—even if the only children born to us are male. I must father sons. ‘Tis my duty. That is why I bid for you on the Choosing Block, Ruby—for your robust figure and your wide, child-bearing hips. Gods know, I did not Choose you for your beauty.”
His cruel words shattered her heart.
She’d thought him different from the other men of this world. She’d thought that a man who was always judged, always expected to behave a certain way because of his appearance, would not judge a woman on her looks alone. She’d imagined he saw beyond her ample flesh and had Chosen her for love. She loved him. She’d believed he might have grown to love her, too.
“I refuse to stand on the Choosing Block and submit to another Choosing, Kyan.” The humiliation of standing half-naked, displayed for all to see, prodded and subjected to jeers and laughter, would be more than she could bear.
Her fragile self-esteem still bore the mental scars of that experience, even as her left shoulder bore the brand.
“Very well. That is your choice. You are aware of course that because our contract will not be renewed for a further term I am no longer responsible for you.” He waited for her nod. “However I am not completely without a heart. I will send some females to assist you in your packing and resettlement.”
Bitterness enveloped her—more smothering than the unrelenting heat of the desert. How big of him to make that concession considering all she’d been through in the past year.
In two days hence, the tented city would be dismantled. All inhabitants would shelter in caves for the next three moon-cycles until the Storm Season passed. All inhabitants except Ruby. She would not spend her remaining years slaving alongside those worn-out older women who undertook menial tasks the more favored women disdained.
“That won’t be necessary.” She lifted her chin, daring him to question why. Hoping that he would understand why she would remain here and let the storm take her, rather than suffer the agony of watching him fulfill his obligation to increase the population. Filling other younger, prettier, more fertile women with his seed.
But Kyan no longer cared enough to ask. He quirked an eyebrow at her, and his lip curled. He obviously doubted her ability to pack her belongings and ready herself for travel.
He was right, of course. He always was. Only two days ago she’d miscarried for the third time and she was weak as a newborn Fennec cub.
“As you wish, Ruby,” he said. And then he turned and strode from the tent.
“No, Kyan. Not as I wished.” Her heart ached with a hurt so profound she was numb, beyond even tears.
The wind trilled an eerie death-knell. She closed her eyes and lay back against the cushions, willing the wind to find her and put an end to her suffering.
~~~
Ruby pried open her eyes. Her heart thudded like she’d just run a mile. She cast her gaze down herself, surprised to discover she was huddled on the footpath, arms tightly clasped about her body as though trying to protect herself from… something.
The old man loomed over her, his piercing gaze taking in every little nuance of expression as she clambered to her feet. It took everything she had left to confront him and hide her fear.
“The Crystal Guardian, I presume,” she said. “Nice to meet you at last, Pieter.” Not.
He cocked his head, staring at her like he would see into her soul.
The best form of defense was offence. Well, maybe not when you were dealing with omnipotent sorcerers, but it was all she could come up with. “Where the hell have you stashed Kyan, you old bugger? I want him back.”
“And what if he does not want you, Garnet Ruby?”
“Tough.” She curled her lip in what she hoped was a credible I-don’t-give-a-flying-fuck sneer. “We didn’t have a fair shot at bonding because of my accident. It’s a pretty impossible task to initiate sexual intercourse and complete a bond when you’re in a coma, don’t you think? You might want to bend your fancy rules a bit, Pieter.”
“I don’t make the rules,” he said, sounding resigned and bone-weary. But she wasn’t going to think about that right now. She didn’t care whether he was suffering. She only cared about saving Kyan.
She rattled on, needing to voice her demands before she lost her nerve. Or broke down and cried over that terribly real vision. “Send Kyan back and give us our allotted time. If we don’t do the wild thing for the third time, or pass your rotten testing, fair enough. Then you can take him. But not before I’ve done my best to save him.”
Pieter seemed unmoved. “And what you’ve seen doesn’t convince you, Garnet Ruby? How could a woman like you, an infertile woman, hope to hold a man like Kyan?”
Evil old man. She hadn’t told anyone about that unhappy result of her accident. “Ah. So that’s what that lovely little scene you chose to show me was all about. Epic fail, Pieter. Because my worth is not measured by my ability to have children.”
She had to believe that. Just as she had to believe that it wouldn’t matter to Kyan, either.
“Listen to me old man. My infertility isn’t the end of the world—not in this world, anyway. If you’d done your research, you’d know there are plenty of kids out there who need good homes and loving families. I can adopt a child.”
“And what if Kyan does not want someone else’s child? What if he does not want you, Garnet Ruby?”
“Just ‘Ruby’ is sufficient,” she said, lifting her chin and wielding the only weapon she had left: her dignity. “And that’s for me and Kyan to work out. Which I promise
you we will when you give him back to me.”
She wanted to wipe the smile from his smug face. How dare he smirk at her, like this was some joke. She grabbed him by his shirtfront and shook him. If she hadn’t still been recuperating, she’d have unleashed all the fury inside her and kicked his arse.
Horrible old man. How could he bear to live with himself after all the suffering he’d put her through—put them through!
Kyan.
Chalcedony and Wulf.
Chalcedony’s mother, and Malach, the Crystal Warrior she’d rejected.
“Who died and made you God?” she hissed, releasing him. “And just so you know, I choose to believe Chalcedony and Wulf’s version of life in the Shifting Sands fief. And I choose to believe in Kyan, too. I don’t believe that fantasy crap you showed me about his world. The man I knew, wouldn’t be so cruel. The man I knew, loved me. And he didn’t care what I looked like, or whether I could have children. Give. Us. Another. Chance. Now!”
He straightened his shirt and adjusted the silken scarf around his neck. And then he smiled. “Your wish is my command,” he said.
Uh oh—
~~~
Chapter Eighteen
Car headlights blinded her. She struggled to her feet. The tortured screech of tires and the acrid smell of burning rubber filled the air. The vehicle’s bumper smashed into her. She flew up over the bonnet, weightless for a split second before she impacted on the car’s windshield. She caught a glimpse of the driver’s shocked face before she slid off the bonnet. Numbness. Then a burst of agonizing pain. And finally—thankfully—oblivion.
It was dark. No, more than darkness—an absence of everything. She was sightless, deaf and mute. Severed from all sensation. She screamed and fought until she believed she would go mad but the nothingness was absolute. And then….
A feather-light thought brushed her bruised and battered psyche.
Kyan.
She searched for him in the nothingness of the void. She couldn’t touch him, for touch did not exist in this time and place. But a part of her soul reached out and snatched the essence of him to her. She had no weapons, nothing physical that she could use in her fight to free him. Nothing except her innermost thoughts and dreams and hopes and desires. And her love.
Time drifted without end and Ruby fought her silent battle to free the man she loved from his crystalline prison. She would not let go. She refused to give up.
And finally, she sensed a spark of awareness that latched on to her and joined her lonely battle.
An eternity later, Kyan awoke.
Her whispered her name in the dark recesses of her mind. “Ruby.”
“I love you, Kyan.”
“I know. I have always known. And I love you, too, Ruby. More than life itself.” And when he kissed her, she could feel his lips and his warmth pressed up against her, taste his unique masculine scent curling through her, see the love in his eyes.
They consummated their love, bodies and souls united in an unbreakable bond that transcended even a goddess-invoked, centuries-long curse.
And when Ruby awoke to her own reality to find herself lying in a hospital bed, Kyan’s was the first face she saw.
“How long have I been unconscious?” she whispered.
“A week has passed in real time,” he said. “Welcome back, my Ruby. And thank you for saving me.” He brushed a straggly hank of hair back from her brow, and then gently brushed her lips with his. “Thank you for loving me.”
“My pleasure.”
His answering smile was that of a man who was looking at a woman, lusting after her in the worst way, and wondering when he’d get a chance to jump her bones. And if not for her broken legs and cracked ribs, yadda yadda, she’d have invited him to do just that. Happiness buzzed through her veins. She was the woman he lusted after. She was the one he loved.
They had been given a second chance. And Ruby intended to be out of her hospital bed in record time, and not wasting a single second of that miracle.
She shifted on her pillow, trying to get comfortable. Kyan raised the head of the bed, and reached over to plump the pillows for her. When he straightened, he held something in his hand.
“What is it?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, merely held it out to her.
Ruby recognized it immediately. It was his kyanite crystal. And it was whole.
When the four-week deadline passed and Kyan didn’t vanish, the last of Ruby’s nagging fears dissolved. As her rehabilitation and recovery progressed, it became obvious the Crystal Guardian had planned a different kind of Testing for her and Kyan—a lifetime sentence. Pieter had a wicked sense of humor, she would give the old bugger that.
When Kyan arrived for his daily visit, Ruby was in the pool with the hospital physio. She hid a grin, wondering how he’d cope with this test.
“Hey babe.” She smacked her lips together and blew him a kiss as she slowly breast-stroked the width of the pool.
“Hey yourself.” He smiled in that breath-stealing way of his.
Laura, Ruby’s physio, had to fan her suddenly flushed face. “He’s gorgeous!” she said, not-so-sotto voce.
“Yeah, I know.” Ruby clung to the poolside rail and slanted the smitten young woman an ear-to-ear grin. “Can I take five, Laura? I’ve something important to tell him.”
“Oh! Right. Sure, Ruby. I need to uh, grab a drink to cool down, anyway. It’s stifling in here this morning. Someone must have turned up the thermostat.” She swam to the side of the pool and climbed up the ladder—a blonde, blue-eyed goddess of a woman, with a stunning figure.
Kyan never even spared her a glance. His killer-blue eyes were all for Ruby.
“Kyan, I need to tell you something.”
His brow creased with worry. He squatted on his haunches to stare intently at her. “Not more complications to delay your recovery, I hope?”
“Complications. Hmmm. I s’pose that’s one way of putting it.”
He offered a hand to haul her from the water. “Do not keep me on tenterhooks, Ruby. Tell me what is troubling you. Please.”
She grasped his hand. “I’m pregnant. We’re going to be parents.”
Kyan stilled mid-heave. And because he still had hold of her hand, when Ruby fell back into the water, he took a swan dive.
She surfaced, spluttering and coughing, to see him treading water. She brushed the sopping wet hair from her eyes and searched his face for a reaction to her news.
His face broke into a huge grin. He whooped and fist-punched the air. And then he paddled over to scoop her into his arms.
“A baby? Our baby? My Ruby, you have fulfilled my every dream!”
Funny that, because he’d fulfilled every single one of hers, too.
~~~
Epilogue
Ruby arrived at Orakei Domain just as the 6 a.m. news headlines were announced on her car radio. She parked, and grabbed the box containing her gear. Once she’d dropped it at the designated area, there was nothing to do except mill around with the other competitors.
Butterflies the size of albatrosses flapped in her stomach. She’d peed before she’d left home but she desperately wanted to go again. Her nerves were getting to her big-time.
The Waitemata was living up to its literal Maori-to-English translation of “Sparkling Water”, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Even so, Ruby shivered as she waited by the start-line.
Start time came, and with it, an interminable agony of cross-legged anticipation. The starts were staggered, so Ruby still had to wait her turn. Then her group of competitors were off, and she didn’t have time to worry about nerves anymore. She waded until she was thigh-deep in the water, then threw herself forward began swimming madly. Or, to be quite honest, considering her still limited abilities, it was more of a mad flounder than actual swimming.
The swim began at the Hammerheads restaurant end of Okahu Bay, and ran parallel to the beach. She was not a competent enough swimmer to head for deeper wate
r to get clear of the other swimmers, so she had to contend with facefuls of seawater flung up from the frantically swimming women churning along beside her. Still, if she needed to rest, or it got too much for her, she knew she only needed to stand up because she wasn’t anywhere near out of her depth.
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t stand up, though. And she didn’t. She swam the entire three-hundred-meter course without taking a break. It seemed to take forever.
And then she was out of the water, rolling her aching shoulders as she loped up the beach to the grass reserve. She basked in the shouted encouragement from both onlookers and the marshals, who were pointing competitors in the right direction.
She’d collected her bike and was running with it toward the transition area exit, when she realized she couldn’t recall stopping to put on her running shoes. Her stomach lurched. For a frantic instant she thought she’d have to turn around and go back, but then she glanced down. Nope. She’d done everything right. She’d even remembered her helmet.
The ten kilometer cycle course along Tamaki Drive was relatively flat, but a couple of ks in, her leg and thigh muscles began protesting the abuse she was heaping upon them. Ruby kept her head down and pedaled for all she was worth. Mind over body. And, as she’d proven while recuperating from her accident a second time, she was very strong-willed indeed.
This leg of the course seemed to pass more quickly. And before she knew it, she’d reached the end of the cycling course, and was racking her bike in the same place she’d collected it at the beginning of her ride. Again, she hadn’t stopped to rest once along the way.
One more leg to go. Mentally, coming on the end of the swimming and cycling legs, this would be the hardest one for Ruby—a three kilometer run that began up the seaward side of Tamaki Drive toward Auckland city.
The Crystal Warriors Series Bundle Page 52
