Page 79 of Hot Vampire Next Door: Season Five

You are not your father. You are not your mother.

You are a MacMahon.

And you are a force to be reckoned with.

The wind and the sleet stops abruptly and the clearing is silent.

It’s snowing again, but only in one spot. Only around me like I’m my own personal snow globe.

I raise my hand and the snow follows the movement, dancing around my fingers.

I’m controlling it, even though there’s no anger, no fear.

Baspin’s mouth drops open before curling into a wide grin. But his eyes aren’t on me, exactly. His gaze his trained just above my head.

“What is it?” I ask.

Bran appears, phone out. He taps at the screen, then turns it around.

The camera is on and I immediately fill up the screen.

And there, sitting atop my head, is a crown made of ice, glittering in the night.

Episode Ninety-Nine

SOON TO BE A QUEEN

I turn my head this way and that, examining the crown made of ice sitting atop my head.

If I didn’t know any better, I would think it was some kind of photo filter, that’s how perfect it is, how good it fits on my head, nestled in my hair.

But when I lift my hand to press my fingers against the big center tine, I can feel it.

The ice is cold but not wet, even though resting on my head, it has a neutral temperature against my scalp. Neither hot nor cold. And there’s strength in it even though each tine looks delicate, fragile.

I take a step closer to Bran’s phone so I can make out the finer details in the light.

The sharp ridges of each tine are made to look like the arms of snowflakes, but below them, sweeping down toward my eyebrows, are several tines that remind me of antlers or spindly leaves.

It fits me perfectly. And it’s light as snow. I can barely feel it.

“How is this happening?” I whisper, following the curve of the crown with my fingers all the way around my head.

Baspin falls to his knees in front of me.

“Don’t do that,” I tell him, and I can hear the sheepishness in my own voice.

Bran gives me a quick shake of his head.

No, the gesture says, they bow and you let them.

Bran may not be royalty, but the Duvals have always operated as if they are. Bran knows that kneeling and bowing is a sign of respect I must endure if I’m to assume the power that’s rightfully mine.

I turn to the clearing where the rest of the fae are now on their knees. All of them except for Arion.

My older brother crosses the clearing. I swallow hard, my mouth suddenly dry. Could I look any more nervous and awkward?

Technically he’s a Lord and the rightful heir to the Summer Throne, but he doesn’t outrank me…yet. He didn’t bow for me when he and the Midnight fae first appeared at The Greasy Spoon. Will he now? Do I want him to? Maybe I don’t. Maybe I make him? Shit, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.