Mrs. Novak seated me next to Yllana, for which I was grateful. I had Martinus on my right, and we were at the head of the table, with another young couple in front of us. Colonel Yaldai, thankfully, was seated far enough from us that he wouldn't be able to notice anything about Yllana.
Now the question was, how do I publicly make friends with a friend I'm not supposed to know already? This was going to be hard. Also, I didn't enjoy being seated at the head of the table. It felt like everybody was staring at me. I'd gotten the looks of curiosity before, but now everybody seemed to be evaluating me, measuring me. The only thing that kept me from having an anxiety attack was Martinus' hand, which regularly stroked mine. I somehow found it… comforting.
When lunch started, Martinus cut the ro
