Rose touches her fingertips to her lips. “Alfie,” she says, “doesn’t matter anymore. You matter. And I’ve been meaning to ask you, what would you like to do with the press? Regarding us?”

At first, I don’t understand what she’s asking me. Then, it clicks, and I forget all about Alfie. “You mean, you’d be okay with telling them about us?” I ask.

“Danni, I have been wanting to stand on a podium and scream it to everybody who will listen since day one. If I could have, I would have. And now I can. But if we tell them about us, you will be a part of this. There will be more attention. Those photographers at the ice rink, and at the palace? They will become a part of your daily life. Bramppath is a bubble, but we won’t be here forever.” She takes my hands. “If you don’t want that, I understand. We can spin a story. If we do tell the world, there will be hate, and some of it will be directed at you. Some people will be furious about us.”

So much has changed. Gradually, so gradually I barely noticed it happen, my anonymity has been slipping away. I’m not who I was when I first arrived here. I’m the person who can play piano to a crowded room, and a person who the paparazzi know by name, and a person who has stood in front of the country and revealed some of the most private parts of myself. I’m somebody strangers do double-takes at on the street. I’m somebody they write essays about online. And, yeah, I’m somebody lots of strangers hate. But I think I’m also somebody even more strangers kind of like. I’m Danni Blythe, and I’m a future concert pianist, and Rose’s current girlfriend, and I’m still a student at Bramppath College because I stopped fearing the idea that people might perceive me.

Who knows? If Rose never gets tired of me, I could even be the queen consort one day. If they let her become queen, that is. And if they don’t, maybe a future version of me could be the wife of Rose the not-queen.

There’s nothing scary about any of that to me. Not anymore. The only thing I feel is excited to get started.

To take the next step forward.

I walk behind Rose to drape my arms around her shoulders. “I know what being with you publicly would mean,” I tell her. “And we’ve already been over this.”

She grabs my hands and presses them against her chest, squeezing them. “We have?”

“Yeah. You can’t give me simple. But you can give me you. And you’re what I want. No more hiding. No more lies. We’ve done plenty of that for one lifetime.”