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.

you want to

move, nor did not look away. “You are Julian seem…

Did we?

were standing very close just now,”

if I admitted that, Nicholas would want to know what we had been talking about.

gave

were close during archery practice,

had totally avoided so much as glancing at me during the archery

become

me

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

me further into disfavor with

spent time with?

were doing just now?” Nicholas’s

my growing nerves. “No, I, um… Julianer, Prince Julian

matters to discuss.”

more. I would take my darkest secrets to the grave,

denying Nicholas. At one point, I would have found a way to give him the

Nicholas’s gaze slid away from me and to the sewing machines

looked over the machines, the threads,

my