Lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t notice Luna’s approach until I heard her footsteps echoing down the corridor. “Hey,” she said as she walked in, then pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “They’re still arguing.”

“Yeah, that figures.” I pulled myself upright and looked at Luna. “Still want to be my apprentice?”

Luna looked at me in surprise. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because of what I told you out there.”

“Oh.” Luna shrugged. “I’d guessed most of that already.”

I stared at her.

“Okay, I didn’t know the details,” Luna said. “But I knew you used to be a Dark mage. There was going to be something.”

“What about Catherine?”

Luna shrugged again. “You’ve kind of got a thing about people coming to you for help. Especially if they’re young. I figured it had to be something like that.”

I looked at Luna’s face, frank and straightforward, and had to laugh. All this time I’d been trying to keep it hidden and she’d known all along. I spend so much time finding out other people’s secrets, and somehow it had never occurred to me that someone else could do the same to me. “It doesn’t bother you?” I said once I’d caught my breath. “Having a master who was trained as a Dark mage?”

“I don’t care,” Luna said. I stopped laughing to see that she was looking at me steadily. “I go to classes and matches and I hear everyone talking about Dark and Light, and they all seem to think that the faction you’re part of is the most important thing in the world. Well, I don’t like either of them. Neither of them are ever going to want me, because I’m not a mage. They don’t care about me. Why should I care about them?”

I fell silent. “It’s not that simple,” I said at last. “I know you’ve got reason not to like either faction. But they are different, and I shouldn’t have joined up with Richard the way I did.”

Luna gave me a puzzled look. “If you don’t like Dark mages, why did you join Richard in the first place?”

I sighed. “Short answer? Because I hated pretty much everyone. I felt like the world had treated me like crap, and this was my chance to turn it around. No one had ever cared about me, so why should I care about anyone else? When you spend all your time lonely and miserable, it’s really easy to start hating everyone who has what you don’t.” I glanced at Luna. “You understand that, don’t you?”

Luna’s eyes went distant, and she nodded. We sat in silence for a little while. “Why did you change your mind?” Luna said quietly.