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?”

did not look

Did we?

close just

that, Nicholas would want to know

I gave

close during

I thought he had totally avoided so much as glancing at me during the archery event. Even when I

you two become so close?” Nicholas

he remembered me

was uneasy. I felt like I was walking along a

further into

I spent time with?

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

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

matters to discuss.”

hoped he wouldn’t ask more. I would take my darkest secrets to the grave, but if he kept pushing, I was so nervous,

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

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

He looked over the machines, the threads,

my