39. Kate

I’ve fallen out with Roxie in the past but never for this long. A full week of silent treatment, neither of us ready to say a single word. In the orphanage it was impossible, we slept in the same room, had limited places to go. In the Compound I could quite easily avoid her completely apart from the classes we shared.

I was relentless in my note taking and revising. I lived in the library, its white plastered walls and long lines of shelves as familiar to me as the damp, depressing walls of my new home. I knew where I could quietly be left alone, free from the whispers and pointing of others.

I’d revised so hard. I am even fairly competent at some Dark Arts now. The next exam focused on witchcraft. The differences between them and shifters. How a shifter using the natural, Moon Goddess approved spirits that surrounds us was different to the manipulation used by witches.

Although called Dark Arts, it is more a form of meditation, connecting to the Moon Goddess on a higher level for