Sleepy Fox Hollow Gain the weight of you, then lose it

Wylla should have known better; it was only her own mind's machinations that made it possible to believe these things of Mahler. There were things she believed about him that came from his own behaviour, but the assumption that he didn't want to be here was not one of those. His voice was quiet, but lashed between them like the strike of a whip and forced her ears and eyes down like she was a scolded pup.

As he expected, she opened her mouth as if to protest—she could not return to Rivenwood where she would be humiliated and mistreated by the remains of Sagtannet—but was cut short by him. Already she was inventing the ways in which he must be scheming to return her to his side and dash all her own hopes and dreams to fulfill his, and that was unfair of her, and he reminded her of it when he mentioned his love and Phaedra's both.

Wylla's eye cut to their sleeping daughter then while her gorge rose in her throat. Not at Phaedra, but at herself. At how quickly and keenly she attempted to thwart every attempt to show love with a reason why it was false; it was easy to do that to Mahler because she felt scorched and shunned in his efforts to show her she mattered to him, but to do it to Phaedra?

To both of them, truly. She knew it, no matter how compulsive it was. Mahler explained that she would not need to stay once she recovered and her first erratic and unfair thought was, don't you want me to? She swallowed thickly, but was unable to stop the tears that welled up in her eye, nor the shame she suddenly felt, that forced her to press her face into her legs with a shuddering sob.