"Terrified." He said it simply, without the deflection I'd learned to expect from him. "Not the show—I think I've got that. But Marcus..." He handed me a cup, and I caught hints of peppermint beneath something sharper and herbal. "What if Ican't be what he needs? What if I freeze up and he sees through me, and instead of magic, all he gets is some guy in a rented beard having a panic attack?"
"He won't see through you." I set the coffee down and pulled him close. "There's nothing to see through anymore. You're not performing Santa, Alex. You've become him—the version of him that Marcus needs."
He let himself be held for a moment, his forehead dropping to my shoulder. I felt the tension in his spine.
Then he straightened, and his gaze zeroed in on the cloth-covered lump on my workbench.
"What's that?"
I hesitated, but this was Alex—the man who'd carved homecoming marks without knowing what they were, who'd made the theater's lights respond to his presence, and who'd become part of Yuletide Valley's magic in barely two weeks. If anyone had earned the right to see this, it was him.
"I found something in the rafters." I pulled back the cloth. "My great-great-uncle Thomas's journal. He was Johan's son—the one who disappeared from all the family records."
Alex moved closer. His shoulder pressed against mine as he studied the worn leather cover. "Disappeared how?"
"I don't know. Nobody would ever tell me." I opened to the entry about homecoming marks. "But look at this."
He read slowly, his lips moving slightly over the older phrases. When he looked up, he displayed a furrowed brow.
"Patterns that show people they belong here." He was quiet for a moment. "Like the safe harbor mark I carved? The one you said matched what Johan made the night he found the valley?"
"Maybe. I'm still trying to understand it." I turned more pages. "Thomas writes about finding these marks in wood that predated his father's work. He thought they were part of thevalley itself—something that existed before the Blitzen family arrived."
"So you learned to speak a language that was already here."
I looked at him, struck by the elegance of the observation. "I never thought of it that way."
"Can I?" His hand hovered over the journal.
I nodded, and he began turning pages with the same careful reverence he'd shown his grandmother's music box. His fingers traced a detailed sketch—curves and spirals unlike any craftsman's marks I'd been taught.
"Ben." His voice had sharpened. "Look at this pattern."
I leaned closer. The marks flowed across the page in elaborate whorls, beautiful but unfamiliar.
"This section here." Alex pointed. "It's almost exactly how we'd map a dancer's pathway across a stage. The way we notate movement through space." His finger moved to a spiral. "And this—that's the arc of a turning leap."
I stared at the marks, then at him. The connection had never occurred to me, but now that he'd said it, I couldn't unsee it. "You're right. I never would have—Thomas was an artist, but I don't think he danced."
"Maybe the marks were waiting for someone who did." Alex turned another page and went still.
The marks choose their own carriers, Thomas had written.Some souls are meant to help others find their way home, whether they bear our name or not. I have seen the patterns appear beneath the hands of those with no Blitzen blood—artists, musicians, craftspeople who understood how to speak to hearts through their work. The magic recognizes its own.
Alex's hand rested on the page, pressing flat against Thomas's century-old words.
"That night, when I carved the safe harbor mark without being taught, you said it was unprecedented."
"It was."
"But Thomas saw it happen before. With other people." He looked up at me. "Other outsiders."
"Not outsiders. That's the point." I covered his hand with mine, both of us touching the journal now. "People who belonged here. People the valley recognized."
He was quiet for a long moment. Doubt crossed his face, then wonder, then something that looked almost like fear.
"I want to try something," he said finally.
Before I could respond, he'd crossed to the rocking horse I'd struggled with all week—the one whose runners wouldn't sit right no matter how precisely I carved them, no matter how many times I adjusted the balance.
