Sleepy Fox Hollow Where I thought I knew it all before I knew what love was

She could sense the tension beneath Mahler's deep voice as surely as he could see it in the drawn lines of her face. All it would take was one spark for either of them to ignite, and who knew what would be left in the ashes. As always, she was tempted to find out; picking fights was easier than facing hurt feelings and it was what Wylla excelled at most in life, sad as that was. I don't care about your mountains, she might have said just to enrage him, to coax him into lashing out like she believed he wanted to, but she didn't.

Her mouth grew more dry the longer he spoke and she didn't know why. Shame, probably. This man had never done anything wrong to her and yet she had condemned him with ease, but any thought of apology stuck in her throat. It was childish; in spite of maturing some in her time away, mostly thanks to raising the hellion that was Tiercel, some things simply never changed. Swallowing her pride was still too difficult for her, even to release the both of them from this discomfort.

No, she didn't care too much about what happened to Swiftcurrent Creek. He had her there. It was just something to distract from the elephant in the room. That was why when he said he had wanted to see her despite respecting her ruthless rejection of his presence, dread spread through her, followed hotly by an ashamed sort of indignation. Why? she blurted, drawing her brows together into a familiar stubborn knot that he might recognize as commonplace from their time in Grimnismal.