The Luna Choosing Game

As Nicholas asked out Lilliana, I stood in the back of the crowd of watching girls, my heart down on the

floor.

I had no right to be upset. I knew that. I had given up the right to be upset a long time ago.

Yet I couldn’t deny the feeling.

First, Nicholas had returned the handmade gift I made him, and now he was asking another girl on a solo

date.

According to the rules of the competition, solo dates were only supposed to be awarded after a girl performed well in one of the events.

Of course, from what I’d heard, the rules also stated that a prince could ask any girl out at any time, sol supposed such a thing wasn’t unheard of.

But for it to be Nicholas who asked for the first solo date felt like the hardest pill to swallow.

I understood that the candidates were invited here to the palace to date the princes. Soon, Nicholas would pick someone to marry.

clear that he would never be interested

be. We’d both moved on since then. It wasn’t my business who he

dining room, holding Lilliana’s hand with only the barest touch, he didn’t seem happy. That, to me, was the

more I looked at him and his faceless expression, the more he seemed like a shell of the man I once knew. It hurt me to see.

minute, I turned away from the spectacle and

beginning to set over the western tree line. The sky was painted in a palette of orange and purple.

was looking out the window to see it. We had never gotten much time to appreciate nature back in the

hoped she was looking

lost, miss?” a male voice

turned to face

with not a hair out of place or a speck of dirt

more stripes and fringe than the other

because he was the head of the

I had

pointed him out.

severe expression. I

once more,” he said, voice gruff. “Are you lost? The banquet