Moonspear ᵐᵗᵐᵖʰ envinyatar (mtr.)

she was reforged in the sun's fire.
mahler did not fault himself the tension that flickered in his belly when she spoke of her failure at motherhood; twofold. he was reminded both of his own inability to have ever been a successful father, and again of poor dragomir's haunted eyes. "if you leave their lives, andraste —"
— the taste of her new title was a thorn, and must take its time to settle
"— then make it complete. they suffer vithout you. they vill suffer more if you go back and forth. dragomir blames you for vhat happened." mahler wanted to urge the woman to return, to make amends, but the mistrust in the boy ran so greatly he feared it would only inspire hatred in the child. 
the dove could keep no promise that she would stay, he knew now. but this was something that the young could not comprehend. one's mother and one's father must be constants in the shifting orbit of a little one; neither the dove nor the seawolf had done such for their brood. and so dragomir suffered.
"i had a vife vonce, and children," mahler whispered, eyes unseeing before him as he brought to tongue for the first time his telling of a deep, corewrit cowardice.
"i vas young. i loved them. but there vas a fever. it took marigold and our daughter."
— he had held the woman to his chest, and though she had been too weak to even open her eyes, marigold had begged mahler to let her go, to be with
" — astarte," and here mahler's voice broke, truly broke. "and i," he continued in a sob, refusing to hide the slow cascade of tears from andraste, "i saw only for myself. i knew that ve vould all fall. and so i left m — left our sons and the rest of the pack. i ran. i abandoned them."
jaws parted in a blunt and quivering sigh. "so you see. you are not the vorst sort of mother. your children live. do not let that be in vain," mahler implored the woman half-swallowed by the circlet of him, reaching to kiss her features here and there. "do not allow yourself the respite of cowardice, as i have all these years."