Lena's POV
I had been told what Damien said to my father.
Not by Damien himself. By Bastian, in the measured and precise way that Bastian delivered information he believed I needed, with the context laid in first and the central fact placed cleanly at the end. He told me what had been said, what had been demanded, and what my father had agreed to.
Then he said: "I thought you should hear it before he tells you himself."
He had been right to think that.
I spent an hour after that conversation in the small courtyard where my mother took her early mornings. She was not there. I was alone with the trees and the early evening settling around the stone walls, and I let myself feel what the information had produced in me without managing any of it.
My father was going to issue the correctio
