"I don't actually know, you're the first person to get to the point of him liking you as opposed to just not-disliking-yet and then lose it."

A rueful smile. "Perhaps when he comes to live here. Want to circle back around for desserts?"

"Sure." Mmm, palatial desserts.

He'll put his arm around her, sometimes, but lightly, or tuck a strand of hair behind her ear and smile at her, but only in public. They share two desserts. 

Arm-putting and hair-tucking are fine. And by the time they get to the part where they have a wedding she is pretty sure she'll be able to weather a kiss without breaking stride.

He proposes. In private, but for real, so she won't have anything to lie about. He has the good sense not to try to make it a fairytale proposal, though it's a very nice one. He has a spell for it that makes flower petals rain down on them. 

Well, the flower petals are very cute.

She accepts.

They are envied and copied and the city streets start to get rather strewn with flower petals. The King gets a little better. Mitros manages to get some of his preferred proposals through. Iobel gets an appointment to run Education with the titles her marriage will grant her. 

Lovely. She snoops around the department as it stands to compile ideas. She wants Marlese classes for familiars and a way for them to enroll in other schools if they want, and spellbinder education scholarships with a promise to work for certain public services when they qualify...

Mitros can introduce her to people, and tell her what they care about and which angles for pushing these ideas might work on them, but he mostly limits himself to advice. "You're the person they're going to have to know they answer to."

"I appreciate the pointers anyway."

And wedding planning. Technically it could just be a short private ceremony with a priest and some witnesses, but it'll give them a tremendous popularity boost and Mitros is inclined to milk it. A thousand attendees, two days of events.

Two days? What are they going to do to fill two entire days?

Dinner party, morning ceremony, afternoon reception, lots of dancing, and a day off for everyone to nurse hangovers, probably. 

"Is anybody going to care if I don't drink? Because I don't."

"I am sure they won't. If you're concerned you can carry around a glass of something. We will in any event not be expected to be spending the day after our wedding nursing hangovers."

"Of course not. We'll have to tuck away somewhere and catch up on our reading."

"I have a stack of things I've been neglecting in favor of all these dates and all this politicking."

"Oh? Anything good?"

"I'm not sure - do you read A Common Conceptual Language, the third edition just came out and I got rather a lot out of the first two, there's a few new military histories Finankar recommended me, there's a spell or two that I should be able to pick up with a little study and that I'd like to have as King.."

"I haven't read it but I've had it recommended to me, I suppose this should tip the balance into actually picking it up - what spells?"

"The King apparently has something like communicative telepathy! Annoyingly long charge but good duration. All it does is let you send people comments and requests during meetings, you can't even hear any acknowledgment back from them, but it still makes you look rather omnipotent, to say "I'll have someone bring that in" and then have someone rush in with it. There's also a - I don't know if it's a secret, but it's taken very gravely - a spell that lets you make binding promises. In case we ever need to end or prevent a war or something by promising not to attack some nervous neighbor if they don't start it."

"They'd have to believe you were casting the version of the spell you said you were."

"I think the idea is that both sides charge it together? I suppose if you managed to find something else with exactly the same charge time..."

"Or if they just think you might have good enough timing to start charging something else for the rest of the duration when they blink."