Flanna ate quickly and left the kitchen while Zoe was still in full flow with her parents about her last year and a half in Dogwood, carefully navigating around the magical mayhem she’d gotten up to with her friends. She needed to get away from them before she exploded with pure irritation. Flanna had never had friends her own age at home, she had no cousins or siblings her own age in the citadel, and her father said it wasn’t proper for her to mix with the common people. She spent most of her time alone or in studies with her tutors. She was having trouble relating to Penny’s friends, especially Zoe, and Zoe’s father scared her a little.
She sensed that if things were different, if she’d grown up here with Zoe, or if Zoe had grown up in the citadel, they could have been friends, but she
