Ren Patinder - Luna Starweaver
Klein, reading alongside him, couldn’t contain his laughter.
"Oh, look at their Lurker faces (’poker faces’) on the podium," he murmured, elbowing Ren and pointing toward where Julius and Selphira stood watching the crowd’s reaction. "Very difficult to hide..."
Difficult was an understatement.
Julius wore his careful political mask, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward in a way that suggested this particular pairing hadn’t been an entirely random chance.
Selphira wasn’t even trying to hide her satisfaction. Her smile was sharp enough to cut, directed specifically at certain nobles whose schemes had just been complicated exponentially by academic assignments they couldn’t protest without revealing agendas they wanted kept hidden.
Around them, the crowd’s reaction was spreading like ripples in a pond.
Disbelief and fury from some quarters. Delight from others... And from a certain contingent of female students, expressions suggesting they’d just watched their favorite romantic drama take an unexpected but welcomed turn.
Ren stared at his name paired with Luna’s, processing implications that seemed to multiply the longer he looked.
One week.
One full week to spend near Luna, dancing, talking, unable to avoid conversation or maintain the distance she’d been so carefully preserving.
One week until whatever barriers she’d constructed got tested by forced proximity and formal requirements that made isolation impossible.
Klein was right.
This was going to make it very difficult to hide indeed.
♢♢♢♢
The opportunistic nobles were stunned.
"Ren Patinder and Luna Starweaver?"
Lady Morgain, who had been calmly reviewing that Luna’s assignment they’d already arranged was correct, froze. Her eyes moved toward where the name appeared, checking, rechecking, as if the letters might change if she stared at them long enough.
The paper didn’t cooperate. The names stayed exactly where they were, paired together like some cosmic joke at her expense.
"No," she murmured, so low it was almost inaudible. "That’s not what we agreed with the organizers..."
The agreement had been specific... Money had changed hands. Favors had been promised. Luna was supposed to be paired with someone else.
Not him.
Lord Balethon, standing beside her, had lost all color from his face. His usually composed expression cracking into something that looked uncomfortably close to panic.
"This can’t be right. There must be an error..."
Lady Daphina let out a strangled laugh, hysterical. "How...?"
The question hung incomplete because she didn’t know how to finish it. How had this happened? How had their arrangements been overridden? How had they lost control of something they’d thought was secured?
Lord Aldric and Lord Caelum approached, pushing students out of the way without ceremony. They needed to see this with their own eyes, needed confirmation that this wasn’t some elaborate misunderstanding or malicious prank.
The board didn’t lie.
Ren Patinder - Luna Starweaver
The names sat there, mocking every agreement they’d made, every plan they’d carefully constructed.

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