Sleepy Fox Hollow To the house in the pines where the road ends

Mahler was right to fear, but for now there was scarcely even a bud upon which she could rest her ire, and strong opinions aside, Wylla knew it too. She could not even tongue words to reveal how his proclamation and subsequent pardons had changed things, had opened a door that had been tightly closed, even just a crack. Until the day she could find the words—if ever such a day would dawn, because nothing was ever certain with Wylla—she had no right to police what he did, no matter how much she disagreed with it.

No matter how much she believed it would bring him and his imminent children both to absolute ruin when he proved mortal and fallible.

She was slow to approach, hesitant as she teetered on the ever-present razor's edge of making a snide remark or a sassy joke to break the tension, but for once it wasn't necessarily a tension wrought in anger or hurt. It was something else. When she was close enough to feel his heat radiating against her nose and the smell of hare's blood overwhelmed everything, she reached forward across that tiny gap and lapped at the fur on the side of his neck and the crook where it met his jaw to clean it, and for once there was nothing about Wylla's tongue that was barbed or thorny. She was gentle. She was warm. That was what it had changed, spiny exterior aside.