Opal's Wish (Crystal Warriors 4) - Excerpt only

Opal's Wish - Excerpt (Chapter One)

OPAL'S WISH is available now as an eBook from Apple iBooks Stores worldwide, Smashwords, Amazon worldwide, B&N, Kobo, and Google Play.

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OPAL'S WISH

By Maree Anderson

BOOK FOUR OF THE CRYSTAL WARRIORS SERIES

When the Crystal Guardian, Pieter, handed over the danburite crystal to eight-year-old Sera, he intended her mother be the one to release the cursed warrior from the crystal. But Sera's heartfelt wish upon the crystal somehow frees Danbur from his prison. Worse, she bonds with him. Danbur now has no chance to break his curse, and despite all the magic at Pieter's command, this is a mess he has no idea how to resolve.

Danbur is entranced by the little girl. In the weeks remaining before the crystal takes him again he resolves to protect her—even if it means clashing with her mother, Opal, a damaged young woman who doesn't trust any man... let alone a warrior struggling to make sense of an alien world. 

Resisting this complex, compelling stranger is taking all the willpower Opal possesses. And then her past catches up with her, catapulting her back into the media spotlight and bringing her to the attention of the powerful man who once ruined her life. With Sera in jeopardy, Opal is forced to turn to Danbur, the man she can't bring herself to fully trust. All she can do is hope his claims about his mysterious 'connection' to Sera aren't the stuff of fantasy after all. But what Opal doesn't realize is that the clock is ticking. And Danbur's time is about to run out.

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OPAL'S WISH

Copyright 2014 by Maree Anderson

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN: 978-0-9922498-7-8

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Dedication

Thanks to all the readers who asked me for this book—and kept asking, even when life got in the way and it seemed like getting to "The End" would be an impossible task.

And my heartfelt thanks to my wonderful, talented, generous author-friend Nalini: without your advice I would never have had the courage to tell Opal and Danbur's story as I originally envisioned it.

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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.