Stained Glass Secrets and Star Wishes

By Celaine Charles

Ember McCoy, a young and stressed accountant, plans to spend Christmas alone at her family's lakeside cabin. But after a mysterious man offers his kindness and time, she begins to reassess her fast-paced world. Holding a star-shaped, stained-glass cookie up to the light, she makes a wish. Is the glistening candy-blue center a hopeful sign there may be more to her existence than the long work hours draining the joy from her life?

Laiken Devere, an Ashrai water fairy, laments the passing of his grandmother and his future in the shadows of his older brothers. To honor his grandmother, he visits the human world above James Lake, asking the stars to reveal his destiny. But why would fate lead him to an impossible relationship with a human, especially the sorrowful young Ember he found by the lake?

Does Ember and Laiken’s future together now rely on stained-glass secrets and star wishes?

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Nov 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781509243266

Book preview

I can’t believe you made this. How long did it take?

His attention snapped back from the snow castle. The Ashrai measured time differently, so he wasn’t sure how to answer. He pulled off his hat, shoved it into his pocket. It was done before the sun rose.

Her expression lifted. You worked all night?

Yes. He swallowed at the nerves jabbing inside. The image of her crying in the window flashed through his mind again. For you. I wanted to make you smile.

Her mouth dropped open, pink lips unable to express what she might have wanted to say. Or maybe, like him, she wasn’t sure how much truth to divulge.

Stained Glass Secrets and Star Wishes

by

Celaine Charles

Christmas Cookies Series

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Stained Glass Secrets and Star Wishes

COPYRIGHT © 2022 by Celaine Charles

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Kristian Norris

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Edition, 2022

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-4326-6

Christmas Cookies Series

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

Merry, holly, and cheer to my P.B. writing critique group—The Write Club! I appreciate your encouragement and truth with this holiday challenge.

To my family, friends, betas, and editors, I raise a mug of hot cocoa and a holiday cookie in your honor!

’Tis the season to all of you and the heavens above! XOXOXOX

Chapter 1

Laiken

What do the stars know? Laiken peered at the tiny Christmas ornament resting in his palm. The silvery star-shaped edges barely grazed each webbed blue finger as he closed it into a fist. Lifting his arm, elbow bent, ready to hurl the trinket across the chamber, he stopped short. His late grandmother’s words rippled through his core like the currents in a river. Star wishes are star wishes to one species or the next. Make your wish and claim it true.

Frustration deflated when his shoulders dropped, and he opened his hand to hold up the ornament. It spun on a red ribbon in Faery’s hazy morning light, filtering through the sodden borders of his airtight, underwater territory. Laiken exhaled, glancing out the castle window. Dim rays bent through the watery world separating his enclosed family estate from the dry lands above. It was only a short swim from his home to the banks of Faery, and even farther to the human world, but his mind felt a million miles away.

What are you doing? Laiken’s brother, Aenon, leaned in the arched stone doorway, dark eyebrows raised. Christmas in Faery? Why are you keeping up with Grandmother’s strange traditions? She is gone.

She has only just passed. Laiken ignored his older brother’s wrinkled forehead and hung the star on a green branch of a young spruce. He’d dragged it from the woods above to their bubble-enclosed castle the night before.

Aenon wasn’t the only brother worried about Laiken’s grief after the death of their grandmother. His three older brothers were just as concerned. Although their family was close, Laiken’s kinship to her was…unique. He was the youngest, and the only one of five who had sat at her feet, begging for more stories from the past. His favorites were about the times their kind, the Ashrai, ventured to the human world far outside the lands of Faery. And as Laiken grew, he became her favorite, not for a lack of loving her other grandsons, but more about enjoying his constant audience. Even Mother and Father agreed that Laiken’s company was medicinal for the aging water fairy.

Laiken sighed aloud. He hadn’t realized that she’d had medicinal effects on his own spirit. Listening to her stories kept her talking, with bright eyes and reminiscing smiles. They kept her alive, and in a way, brightened his own lifeline. Until now. He not only missed his grandmother; he missed his friend. What was next? With four older brothers to follow in their family’s legacy, guarding the four borders of their underwater territory for Faery, there was nothing left for a fifth brother to do. Even when he’d grown old enough to work as a respected guardian, he was scarcely needed, save filling in for another fairy-soldier.

Grandmother was centuries old. She lived a good life. Aenon put a webbed hand on Laiken’s shoulder. It is time to let her rest and think about the family legacy.

And where do I fit in this legacy? Laiken snapped before his head bobbed against his chest. I am sorry. He regretted his words, letting his long green hair flow across his face. I mean to say, I have been so busy with her these last months…years. The rest of you have the borders covered. I have no path. He eyed his brother.

Aenon stood in the doorway, copper leg scales glinting in dawn’s glow. His green breastplate sat askew against his chest, loosened after his evening shift. Well, I am sure Rayan could use you in the south. He pulled his emerald locks out of the gathered knot atop his head.

Laiken arched his eyebrows. Was that it?

Or maybe Struan in the west? Aenon scratched his head.

Are you going to list off all our brothers? The province beneath Faery is as safe as the queen’s private courts. Father has seen to that with his first four sons. He leaned against the window’s ledge, condensation dampening his shoulder, but it felt warm and somehow comforting against his scales.

Aenon was slow to respond, or maybe he had nothing to say. Laiken glanced around at Grandmother’s treasured souvenirs, collected from beyond the surface. They filled every stone shelf along the walls. She hadn’t gathered them from the lands of Faery. No, she’d found these tokens much farther from home, in the human world. It was a place the Ashrai never ventured…anymore, far beyond their own waterways, through a veil between worlds. It wasn’t the distance though. There were too many humans now, and captivity on human land was a death sentence to any water fairy.

Laiken exhaled, emotionally and physically spent. Sunlight trickled through the window, a natural reminder for his kind; it was time for bed. Although the water-filtered sunlight did not affect water fairies in their homelands, as it might beyond their world, they still did their best to avoid its scorching rays.

You aren’t useless, Aenon finally said. You have already completed the queen’s training as guardian. Do not let your time with Grandmother detour you from your rightful journey. She needed you in the end, and for that Mother is grateful. We all are. But Grandmother has passed on… He stopped, picked up a bauble from a shelf. It was a hand-sized, wood-carved figurine, though softened from the constant moisture in the trapped air, locked under volumes of water. What is this?

Laiken took it from him and held it at the proper angle. It is a bear cub holding the English letter D.

Aenon shook his head, as if he