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

didn’t move, nor did not look away. “You

Did we?

very close just

had to, with how softly we were talking, but if I admitted that, Nicholas would want to know what we had been

gave a non–committal

were close during archery practice, as

at me during the archery event. Even when I had been with his group, he hadn’t said one word to

did you two become

remembered me from

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

me further

hated me. Why did he care who I spent time with? Unless he was worried I had turned my machinations on Julian

doing just now?” Nicholas’s

growing nerves. “No, I, um… Julianer, Prince Julian and I had some

matters to discuss.”

grave, but if he kept

never been very good at denying Nicholas. At one point, I would have found a way to give him the

and to the sewing machines I’d had the maids set

the

my