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((The Mon/Wen/Fri Double -- page 1 of 2))
But what other reason could there be? If Hector was acting normally with everyone except her, then...?

These questions were not helping the atmosphere at all.

Lynnette was suddenly feeling so intensely uncomfortable that she was beginning to wonder how Hector could stand there looking so calm and collected.

Wasn't he supposed to be the awkward one here? What, was he just accustomed to it now or something?

No, she must've just been overthinking it. Hector was a lord now. If anything, he was probably looking down on her.

No, wait, he wasn't like that. She knew that much about him, didn't she? What the hell was going through her head, right now?

Her brain was just trying to come up with excuses for why Hector... for why Hector...

Agh, she could hardly even articulate it to herself.

This was absurd. She was a member of the Queen's Guard. She was the White Sword of Atreya. How could she allow herself to be getting flustered over such a trifling thing? Was she a child?

She recalled the Queen teasing her about this very subject. And she recalled Hector running away from a conversation soon thereafter. And she also recalled Hector telling her later that it had been because of an upset stomach...

And now...

Wow.

She felt really stupid all of a sudden--and for contradictory reasons, somehow. It seemed obvious that Hector felt some sort of way about her, and yet, it also didn't. Like she was just being full of herself, expecting something when she shouldn't.

Well...

It might've been true that, for all the composure that Lynnette tried to exhibit outwardly, she didn't really have much experience with... this sort of thing.

She'd experienced a couple brief crushes in middle and high school, perhaps, but she'd never pursued them or even given them much real thought. She hadn't had the time. She'd known since she was ten years old that she wanted to join the Queen's Guard. Well, okay, back then it had technically been the King's Guard, but still. She had devoted herself utterly to that end.