Sleepy Fox Hollow To the house in the pines where the road ends

how could she stay, now the the outcome had been writ for himself? mahler did not know that wylla had entertained her own personal thoughts upon an alternative outcome.
it would not harm her to see him pursue his aims, he believed; such emotion was reserved only in a reciprocal fashion. and yet she lingered, and it occurred to him that like sarah, perhaps wylla wished to see her warning of doom come to fruition.
the she-wolves within mahler's life shared a grand myriad of opinions upon him, and some childish part of the man demanded that each of them be disproved in turn.
"i do, mahler assured, though it hovered at the forefront of his mouth to ask if she felt even an iota of what he had professed to her.
such knowledge was not his to know; mahler proffered a gentle smile that was careful 'round its edges. "i have ... felt many things since you returned, vylla. and vhile it has not been a time of ease for either of us, i vould not have it another vay."
why discontinue a pattern of honesty? the gargoyle's charcoal ears fell back against his heavy crown in the next moment; only she could drag him bodily from his cold niche and force him into exhausting lengths of wordiness he experienced with no others.