Page 96 of Under the Mistletoe
She didn’t realize she was just standing there staring at them until Jess spoke low in her ear. “Well, open one.” Then Jess motioned to the side of the dance floor, where many kids, the kids who had been at her event, were smiling at her, whispering back and forth.
Devin sat on a stool next to the tree and opened the first one, wrapped in red paper. It was a rainbow-colored bouncy ball from the Santa store she’d set up. She opened the next. A blue Slinky. The third was an adjustable purple ring that she had no doubt would turn her finger green.
Jess, who’d been running Santa’s Workshop, squatted down next to her and started pulling out all the gifts. She lowered her voice. “I hope you don’t mind. Tyce called me an hour ago, with a bit of help from Ann, and said you needed real Christmas gifts. They reached out to every family to get involved, and they all stopped by Santa’s Workshop on the way here to pick up and wrap you a gift. It was so cute. I figured you could throw them back in the store if you didn’t want them.”
“I want them. I want to keep each one.” She couldn’t keep the smile from her face as tears filled the corners of her eyes but didn’t fall. They had gotten her Christmas gifts.
“And none of those are books,” Tyce yelled from over by the wall, and a couple kids shushed him.
“She can’t know they’re from us,” Vicky whisper-yelled at him.
Devin brushed a tear away. “It’s perfect.”
Hannah was right. Heritage was her family if she chose to let them be. She opened each gift, then hugged each kid in turn. After the last child scampered away, she turned back to Jess, who was holding out a roll of paper tied by a red ribbon. “One more.”
Devin pulled the ribbon, and the pages unfurled. It was a new chapter twenty-four. Her breath caught, and she searched the room, but there was no sign of Logan. The kids had filled her heart like nothing ever had, but the pages in her hand set her heart pounding.
She glanced at Jess, but she was holding another gift. A blue box with a silver bow. Devin held out her hand, but Jess pulled the present back. “I can only give you this one if you still want it after reading that one.”
They were connected. Maybe Logan had been her Secret Santa after all.
Devin stepped closer to the tree, letting its lights illuminate the pages. She devoured the words.
Stone of Anwar: Chapter 24
Where was he? Rand scanned the area, but there was nothing. No sound, no light, no feeling, no sense of time. He could have been here a moment or a hundred years. He just was. Yet in this great void, there was a calmness he’d never known. A sense of peace and love surrounded him, filling him, consuming him.
Then as if someone had pricked the darkness, a speck of light appeared in the distance.
Faint and tiny at first but growing rapidly. The light intensified to the point it was near painful to stare at, and yet he couldn’t look away. And the more he stared at it, the more clearly he could see that it wasn’t growing as much as it was approaching him at an enormous speed. Or maybe he was approaching it.
He blinked against the brightness as colors and details began to emerge in the space. It wasn’t a light at all. Rather a hole. Not like looking into a hole of the ground but as if he were the one emerging from the hole into a wide-open world.
The opening—now the width of his hand—began to come into focus. There was a field where a man walked among tall grass and wildflowers of pink, purple, and yellow. The colors were so rich he could almost taste them. The man walking paused and looked at him, a soft smile in place. He knew that smile.
Orin.
This had to be the Land of Plenty. Origin’s promise.
Without warning, his speed slowed to a stop, leaving the hole about the width of his shoulders and just beyond his reach.
Rand longed to run through those fields and embrace his brother, but something began tugging him backward.No. He spun toward the adversary, but all he found was a ribbon of gold rippling in the darkness. He tried to grasp it, but although it still pulled him, his hand passed right through it.
The ribbon grew brighter, and the gold sparkled and shimmered as it twisted and traveled, forming into a ring. With every spin of the circle, the pull grew stronger and the gold thicker. But just as the tug toward the ring increased, so did the force dragging him toward the opening.
He glanced back at Orin, who had now been joined by their parents in the field. Only, his father was younger than he had been the last time he’d seen him. Every line of worry and stress Father had carried as king was gone. The three of them each extended a hand, beckoning him to come.
He took a step toward his family, but the pull of the golden force yanked him back again. Yet it seemed to be weakening. He took another step, and it seemed he could drag the mysterious force with him, but it refused to let go.
Rand reached for the gold ribbon, but it was too far away. There was something beautiful and mesmerizing about it, and he wanted to take it with him. He drew it a little closer with a wave of his hand, but still it eluded his touch.
“You must choose.” A deep voice came out of the darkness, vibrating his entire being.
Origin.
Rand had never audibly heard Origin’s voice, but there was no question in his mind whose voice it was. It seemed as familiar as his own father’s.
“Choose quickly, for the gold is fading and it will not last.”
