how strange love was! how swift and savage and unrelenting its ways. mahler gave up the ghost of denying himself that which the dove offered; mother no longer, but nurturing she remained. there was a worm of unsurety within him; how could he, striving patriarch to diaspora, trust a woman who turned away from her children? 
yet by her scarred lips it was best, though mahler too ached for dragomir and isilmë. to lose a mother, however selfless, would be difficult for the pair. and so he would offer, and continue to offer, the love of his heart, charmed to life when they had breathed that den under the ministrations of olive and himself. arrogant, yes; he would have been better father to them both than what they had been given.
again he wanted to beg of andraste why she had abandoned diaspora, cast off her lot there for the churlish impulse of a conflict she could have never hoped to win. stigmata had spared the sunstruck woman only upon a whim, and though his brother had not spoken of it, mahler wondered oft if it was for his own heart that the pale fury had not been cast down into death.
"brumous, saint. those vhere their names," he sighed into the reach of her, lavender eyes at once weary and half-veiled by lids that hid saltwater behind their depths. why not all of it, the telling? he had already given andraste more than he had done for another.
perhaps it was the suggestion that their paths would again diverge that had eased the words from his lips. she knew now how to harm him; he need only avoid her if he did not want himself tarnished. but there was no malice in the sylph; no true desire to outlash, thorns beneath her tongue simple and half-budded, to be used in sole self-preservation.
nothing to say now; he rested his heavy crown upon the murmuring upswing of her delicate skull and was silent.