Sawtooth Spire Wanna believe, wanna believe that you don't have a bad bone in your body

her sharp words brought thorns blossoming under his tongue again. mahler stared stonily to where phaedra perhaps roamed, and then his hard gaze flicked back to wylla. "i know that she does not like vater. that is vhy i vant her to see it is to be respected, not feared." he lifted his chin with a rage of pride. why should he explain himself? her talk of their daughter's wounded heart rankled the gargoyle with a stab; he knew these things. he had admitted them. "and i have been looking for our son. every day since he has been gone."  
it was her dew-flecked glare that reminded him of all his failures anew, and mahler felt the weight of them as he looked unblinkingly upon her. darkened lilac thunder rolling in coreheart; and now the storm moved again.
mahler dug his claws into the earth, willing the muted loam to steady him, fair begging for some taut handle upon himself, but alas, none such came.
"i communicated all of this to you, at the first," came his rejoinder, rimed with ice. "i never vonce gave you the illusion that it vould not be this vay. i cannot change your heart, but i vill not be blamed for a decision you had equal part in making."
sides billowed with a long-held breath. the man knew gravely that he had overstepped some unsaid thing, stumbled across a tripwire of some sort, but per the masculine order of himself, only prickled in the silence that followed. glowering, lavender to sungold, irascible, arrogant, wounded, wrong.