The Luna Choosing Game

I’ll leave you two to chat, Julian said, tapping Nicholas on the shoulder.

Side by side Julian and Nicholas were of comparable height, with Nicholas an inch or two taller. They

looked similar too, though Julian’s features were somewhat softer than the hard angles of Nicholas’s

face.

Nicholas wasn’t saying anything. His expressionless gaze shifted from me to Julian and back again.

Julian laughed on his way out the door and well down the hallway. I could hear echoes of it long after he

was gone

I thought Nicholas might leave too. Had he only come to look for Julian? Despite Julian’s teasing, it seemed impossible that he would have been searching for me.

Yet when Julian left, Nicholas stayed in my doorway, fixed and unmoving like a statue.

Under his unwavering stare, I began to get nervous. Did he overhear something that Julian and I had

talked about? No, we’d been speaking softly. Even from the door, he wouldn’t have been able to hear.

So what did he want?

I waited out his silence for as long as I could manage before I finally broke.

to

nor did not look away. “You

Did we?

very close

how softly we were talking, but if I admitted that, Nicholas would want to know what we had been talking about. As far as

I gave a

during archery practice,

had noticed? I thought he had totally avoided so much as glancing at me during the archery event. Even when I had been with his group, he hadn’t said one word

you two become so close?” Nicholas

he remembered me from the

uneasy. I felt like I was walking along a dagger’s edge, and one

me further into disfavor with

thing seemed ridiculous. He already hated me. Why did he care who I spent time with? Unless he was worried I had turned my machinations on Julian since he himself had

that what you were doing just now?” Nicholas’s eyes narrowed, his focus

I, um… Julianer, Prince Julian and I had some

matters to discuss.”

to the grave, but if he kept

denying Nicholas. At one point, I

and to the sewing machines I’d had the maids

the machines, the

my