Jade Fern Grove klagelied

hearing the names of the children nyx had borne him come from wylla's mouth strained mahler in a new way, and comforted him in another. astraeus as well; linked into her promise for a life restarted. and so he let go the constraint he had placed upon himself, allowed in the next his mind to truly envision what light this world might fill itself with.
wylla and himself, and phaedra, and thade, and stag; the corewood of a tree that would hold a new strength for their solidarity. but who might hold rivenwood now? appoint another, she had said, and mind meandered over names —
mahler slammed shut the door of his imaginings, pulled the memory of her kiss seeking his flesh from where it beat hot and desirable beneath the edge of his heartstrings. his children must come before all else, for whatever missteps mahler had made, he would not repeat them with the offspring he had sired. 
control then; rivenwood a pillar of it, something that had swiftly pieced itself together beneath his reign, and he alone. sagtannet rendered finally the death that should have been dealt when wintersbane disappeared from their range altogther. that then the moment that mahler had overlooked: the time in which he and wylla, beautiful proud wylla, might have first begun to lay the foundation for the empire she illustrated now.
blood copper in his mouth as fangtip scratched the inside of his cheek — the shadowpriest swallowed it back and looked at last into the full searching hold of her sunflower eyes. "the vays in vich i have tried to show you my love vere not enough. not the right thing," mahler struggled, attempting to articulate the threadbare ways in which his throat always unraveled in her presence; even now, clenching at his stomach and spilling icewater along the breadth of his shoulders, a hard cold lump of ice where wylla had once rested against his heart with trembling warmth.
"again, i —," the gargoyle grit out nonsensically; a doktor dropping his travelbag in a muddy street, clasp breaking and sending a dozen carefully folded strips of parchment scudding across the frozen street —
sagtannet is no more. but wylla would want his talk of love rather than land, and mahler could not help the urge of his imagination drawing him toward the small fierce woman with her heart laid bare again, emotion squeezing his throat until a whire breath struck the wintered air again.
"i love only you, vylla," mahler said softly, reverently. "that is unchanged. vhat has shifted," a pause as he closed his eyes, "is my ability to tear up roots vonce more. a fourth time," he churned, spinning slowly out into the starlight sea of his own crushed mind. "my love for you cannot exceed my obligation to leadership. not now. you vant me to make a choice now and i cannot. you vant me to say yes, i vill come avay vith you now — vylla! vhy can you not understand that all i am is all i can offer you now?"
a life, bound by duty and by land. a life without spontaneity — come back, come back. but she would not. "i vas not enough before. your dream is that somehow i am more than that now." and he hobbled himself, striking back upon the revolution of his own words, rebelling against the little dream she sought to engender in his breast, and quaking all the while for the heavy, desperate weight of love he felt vying in him against every word he had said.