Sunspire Mountains she slipped the lock, and changed her dress

Wylla scarcely heard Tiercel's rejoinder, so lost within her own melancholy was she. She might not have heard another word Tiercel said, period, if it wasn't for the abrupt shock of cold water hitting her in the face. With a splutter, the Eisen stepped back. For just a moment, the fire that usually burned hot in her soul flared and her face contorted into a snarl.

But then she was faced with the uncomfortable knowledge that her daughter was really, truly in front of her, and barbing her with a scathing look that she might recognize if she ever observed her own reflection. Stunned into silence, Wylla could only stare with hurt leaching slowly into her eyes. Tiercel left her. Tiercel left her and was standing here now, staring at her with something Wylla could only identify as hatred.

Tiercel, she breathed, taking a tenuous step toward her grown first-born, only to hesitate. You never came home. Singra came back but you never did, I... got worried. That wasn't much of an explanation, but it was the best she could manage through the gloomy miasma that had claimed all her verve and vigour. I was afraid, I... but you're alive. Thank god. Whatever Tiercel might believe, in spite of all their fighting, Wylla's daughter was the best thing that ever happened to her—including the birth of her most recent cubs, which had only brought her immense pain so far. Unfair as it was to Phaedra and the missing-probably-dead Thade, neither of them could really hold a candle to Tiercel. Wylla had her on a pedestal. A frustrated one, but a pedestal nevertheless.