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.

want to talk?”

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

Did we?

close just now,”

want to know what we had been talking about. As far

gave a non–committal

close during

had totally avoided so much as glancing at me during the archery event. Even when I had been with his group,

did you two become so

me from the

uneasy. I felt like I was walking along a dagger’s

me further into disfavor

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

you were doing just now?” Nicholas’s

“No, I, um… Julianer, Prince

matters to discuss.”

ask more. I would take my darkest secrets to the grave, but if he kept pushing, I was so nervous, I would surely give

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

gaze slid away from me and to the sewing machines

He looked over the machines, the threads,

my