Sleepy Fox Hollow you did not break me

a rueful smile clung somberly to his lips; he leant into ketzia's touch with a sigh. he could no more tell her that he had wasted those same joys once before than he could voice andraste's name. "perhaps it vill come to pass for me all the same." three women of age in diaspora — he would not press himself as a choice, not when he planned to be unbound for the season to come. but the offer lingered there, and would between himself and each of them.
"i am so happy that trench found his vay," the gargoyle murmured. "he has been ... as a son to me." as he had wanted. as stigmata would have loved to see, mahler believed. "thank you, ketzia. you have been a boon to diaspora, and to me."