Killian and I returned to the cold, blustery Capital a few days later and did our best to slip back into our lives as if nothing had changed. He felt it best to leave any public announcements until after the dinner with his parents, so we could get a better handle on how his parents were thinking. So I wrapped my vine-ring, handcrafted by the Prince of Rhenland himself, in tissue paper and tucked it into the jewelry box my mother had given me for my eleventh birthday, and left my finger bare.

I also went back to work right away. Luckily the nausea never got any worse – the few times I had to make a dash for the bathroom I managed to do it unnoticed. My boss and my friends were welcoming, sympathetic and clearly happy to have me back. They knew I was still with Killian because I told them as much, although I left out a few of the more pertinent details. There would have been no fooling them anyway – I was happy and it was obvious. If I'd tried to be coy, to pretend it was all much ado about nothing with Prince Killian, they would have known I was lying my face off.

A few days before the dinner at St. Stephens, we – Lily, Christine, Jane and I – were in one of the prep rooms at the office, tidying up after another hectic afternoon and early evening of prepping a couple of semi-famous actresses before a premiere. There had been a headline that day, about Killian's friend Tristan's marriage. It had been accompanied by a photograph of the bride and groom outside a tiny little stone church in Spain, smiling broadly as they walked hand in hand towards the classic car that was about to whisk them off into married life. Of course I knew all the details, but my friends didn't, and they were gossiping about the story.

"I guess he just decided he could live without that big old house – if living with it meant rejecting her," Christine commented.

"Soooo romantic," Lily sighed, turning to me. "If Tristan Aristo-whatever can do something like that, who knows Eva, maybe the Prince can, too?"

I shrugged, non-committal. Killian had warned me about telling other people, but he'd also ultimately left it up to me, aware of the fact that he'd misjudged the people in my life once before and not eager to do it again. What I'd told him back then, about trusting them, was still true. And I knew that it was probably going to be only a few more days before everyone in Rhenland knew about our engagement. I wanted my friends to know about it – and I wanted them to hear about it from me, not from some newspaper or website that would inevitably garble some of the facts. So I took a deep breath and replied.

"Well, actually –"

Jane was on it right away, raising her eyebrows at me. "What? Well actually – what, Eva? Do you have something to tell us?"

Three pairs of eyes focused on me, and then a fourth when our boss walked in. She spotted us and frowned. "What's going on in here, then? You girls look like you're discussing some kind of international conspiracy."

"Well," I replied. "Not quite. But actually, Elsa, you might want to hear this too. Because pretty soon, we're all going to be dealing with it."

"Oh my God!" Jane squealed. "Oh my God, Eva! What's going on? Did he –"

"Calm down," I giggled. "You're making me nervous. And before I say anything else, I need everyone here to swear not to tell a single soul. Not your boyfriends, or friends, or families, or anyone. OK?"

There was an immediate cacophony of promises around me as the four of them pulled up chairs and looked at me expectantly. My cheeks began to burn, because I've never been too comfortable being the center of attention. I steeled myself.

"We're engaged. Killian and I. We went on holiday before I came back to the Capital, and, um, that's where it happened. That's where he asked."

A stunned silence briefly descended, broken by Jane leaping to her feet, shrieking with joy and throwing her arms around me. She was soon followed by the rest of them, excluding Elsa, who hung back, smiling and waiting for the others to finish freaking out. Which took quite a long time.

"Congratulations," she said, when she could finally get a hug in. "I suppose the whole country will know about this soon?"

I nodded. "Probably. I think so. It kind of depends on what Killian thinks – he knows more about this kind of thing than I do.'

"Well either way," Elsa replied, "this is enormous news, Eva. An engagement is always enormous news, of course, but this engagement – I hope you're ready. You have my word that this won't go beyond this office." At this point, Elsa turned and looked at the other three women in the room. "Do you hear me, ladies? Not beyond this room. This is happy news, but it's also going to affect all of us. There will media attention, and it will be on us as well. I'll get a PR person in here tomorrow to give you some tips but I want you all to be aware that you're now going to be identified with this business, and that I expect you to conduct yourselves with grace."

We all nodded, including me. There was more chatter, entreaties to see the ring (which I didn't yet have on my finger), questions about how the proposal had happened, requests to see the dress (I hadn't even thought about the dress yet). Eventually, Elsa looked down at her watch.

"I need to be getting home, ladies. How about you all go for a drink if you want to keep talking about this – which I know you do – this clean-up can wait until tomorrow."

So we did just that, barreling down the street to a local pub so my friends could pepper me with question after question, all four of us barely able to contain our own excitement.

* * *

A few days later, I found myself walking down the streets of the Capital hours before the dinner with Killian's parents. It was snowing – the first snowfall of the season, and I was entranced by the fat, soft flakes as they floated down all around me, muffling the sounds of the city and softening the sharp edges, until everything took on the air of a fairytale. I made eye contact with some of the passersby, smiling at them the way strangers sometimes do as we rush through our busy lives, on the way home from work with groceries or heading to a bar to have a few drinks with the cute new guy at work.

I knew, from talking to Killian, and just from thinking about my future life, that this might be one of the last times I was truly able to be anonymous in public. It lit that walk in the snow with a kind of achingly precious light. Strangely, it reminded me of the last day of high school, all of us meeting at our lockers, carrying our books to classrooms the way we did every day – except that day, we did it all with the knowledge that it was the last day we were ever going to do it. And that knowledge imbued those familiar actions and faces with the golden glow of nostalgia-foretold. We were so young, but I know we all felt it, the weight of an ending and the promise of a new, unknown beginning.

As I walked along the streets in a near-daze, my phone snapped me out of it. Killian.

"Eva? Where are you?"

"I'm – uh, walking home from a job. Have you looked outside? It's snowing!"

"Oh, is it? I'll have to go look out the window. You're walking home? Let me send Dan to pick you up, you need to – uh, oh, hey, it is snowing! Yeah, what was I saying – yes, you need to get ready. We have to be at St Stephen's soon."

Killian was understandably distracted. It didn't bother me, I knew he was very nervous about the dinner. So was I – but the snowfall had taken me momentarily out of myself. I told him where I was and he said to stay there, that he'd have someone come pick me up right away.

So I stood on the street, looking up into the dark sky and watching the snowflakes spiral down, laughing whenever one of them landed on my nose, and waited for my ride. It came quickly, in less than five minutes – Killian's drivers seemed to have a supernatural ability to navigate the Capital's traffic. A burly, bald man hopped out and opened my door for me and I swear there was a moment there. Who knows why it was that moment, that night? But it was. I climbed into the backseat and looked out once more, just before the door closed on me, and I knew that one chapter had ended, and another was about to begin.

Killian wore a dinner jacket to St. Stephens, and I wore a simple black dress, cut below the knee and high on the neck, conscious of the impression I wanted to make. When he introduced me to his parents, in the cathedral-like entrance hall, I curtsied politely and Killian shot me an approving grin as we made our way into the dining room. The King and Queen didn't know that he'd spent a full hour going over the protocol of curtsies and handshakes and greetings with me the previous weekend.

I won't say that dinner was easy – it wasn't. Royal or not, his parents were human and I could sense we were all making an effort to be on our best behavior. His father slipped a few times, once when he asked me about my work and couldn't keep a note of distaste out of his voice when he said the words 'make-up artist.' Oddly, it didn't even bother me that much. I knew who I was. If the King of Rhenland thought make-up artistry was beneath him or his family, that was alright, because I didn't. And Killian Chatham-Hayes – the only person in that room whose opinion I truly cared about – didn't either. He respected my work. His love made me brave and confident. The walk in the snow had affected me, too, given me a kind of clarity about everything. His parents didn't have to be wildly happy – why would they be, they weren't getting anything they wanted? – but they did have to accept me, because Killian had made that much clear.

When it was over, and we were in the car on the way back to Pritchard Palace, Killian turned to me.

"You did well, Eva. You did so well. I'm proud of you."

"So did you," I replied, squeezing his thigh. "We all did, I think. Even your parents. I can tell they're not in love with me but we all got through it, didn't we? With no shouting or smashed plates?"

Killian laughed. "Eva, you have no idea. My parents aren't warm people. They're very formal, it's just how they are, how they were brought up. It really couldn't have gone any better than that. They've come around. That's a good thing for them, because they were going to have to, sooner or later. I guess they just saw the writing on the wall."

When we got back to the palace, I insisted on taking a walk through the grounds with Killian, so he could experience the snow, which was still falling.

"You're right," he commented as we walked along one of the stone paths, giggling as we caught snowflakes on our tongue. "This is nice. I never do things like this, you know. I never go walking in the snow just to go walking in the snow."

"Well now you do," I told him.

He put his hand on my still-flat belly and smiled at me. "And now I do."

We walked on in the snow and a few minutes later Killian spoke. "I'm going to tell them this weekend, about the engagement. I have a meeting on Sunday with my father. I think part of them already knows. I'm pretty sure my mother does, anyway."

"This weekend?" I asked.

"Yeah. There's going to be so much hassle involved in this, Eva. Just organization, media strategy, all of it. I'm going to try and minimize it, but we're going to have to deal with it one way or the other."

I kicked at a fluffy drift of snow. "I know. I mean, I don't know, but I believe you."

"It doesn't really matter."

I looked up at him and brushed a few snowflakes out of his hair. "It doesn't, does it?"

"No. We'll deal with it. But I refuse to let the hassle affect the things that really matter. I'm going to marry you, Eva. I'm going to marry you and we're going to have a baby. All I care about is that – you."

I slipped my arm through his and we slowly started walking back to Killian's apartment, quietly joyful as the snow fell on the dark Capital.