Page 51

I decided that was as good a coronation speech as I was likely to get out of him.

The mood shifted, just slightly, a beat later, when my gaze landed back on the crown sitting there by the tip jar. Aideen went quiet inside my chest—not alarmed, just thoughtful, the way she got right before she was about to make me think about something I'd rather not.

Every living Dragon will feel it. Fate's words, still sitting exactly where she'd left them.

For the first time since she'd said it, instead of dreading that, I found myself simply curious.

"What exactly happens when I put that thing on?"

"They'll know the Dragon Queen has been crowned," Aideen said.

"Will they know where I am?"

"No."

"Good."

Aideen paused. "That doesn't mean they won't look."

That was all she gave me. No explanation. No fresh catastrophe attached. Just the quiet, certain sense that whatever came next was going to reach a whole lot further than Dragoon Bootay.

I looked around my shop one more time. Kai, watching me with that soft, proud look he got when he thought I wasn't paying attention. Zelda and Theresa, arguing quietly over the last cinnamon roll. Barney, journal already back out, because of course it was. Maeve and Maisie, keeping half an eye on all of us, apparently counting heads and finding, against considerable odds, that every single one of them was still present. My boys and Mona sprawled across the floor. My coffee. My crown.

My whole, ridiculous life.

I reached out and picked up the crown. Didn't put it on. Just held it.

The second my palm closed around it, something moved through me that had nothing to do with gold light or Aideen's voice. A pulse, low and vast, like a second heartbeat starting up somewhere underneath my own—not painful, not even unpleasant, just entirely new. It rolled outward from my chest to my fingertips and kept going, as if it had somewhere else to be.

Aideen went very still.

Was that it? I asked. Is that them knowing?

Not yet, she said. That was just you, getting ready to be heard.

I decided not to think too hard about how many ears might be listening for that, someday, somewhere I'd never been.

It was gold and warm and entirely, finally mine.

"Don't forget the tacos," Chewy said.

"I swear to the Great Goddess..."

I looked down at the crown in my hands.

For most of my life, destiny had been something that happened to me.

Not anymore.

This time, I picked the date. I picked the people. I picked the life.

And when the time came, I would damn well put on the crown.

The coronation of the Middle-Aged Dragon Queen was officially on.