Lena's POV
My mother cried when she heard the ruling.
Not in front of the council, not where anyone could file it away as weakness to be used against her later. She waited until we were alone in the small sitting room off the kitchens that had become hers in the weeks since she arrived, the kettle warm on its stand, the window catching the thin winter light in a way that reminded me, every time I sat in it, of the window on the second landing of my father's house.
She set down her cup very carefully when I told her. Formal severance of parental standing, I said. He no longer has any claim to speak of me as his daughter in any matter that touches my life or my son's. The council ruling had been read to her already by one of the household staff, secondhand, but she wanted to hear it from
