Sleepy Fox Hollow brimming and broken and somehow

"there is no vone who is at fault for it," pressed mahler after her. he would not allow his platter of guilt to become her burden. but he could not keep the tears from phaedra, nor the fear that she expressed beneath saltwater glistening.
"of vhat are you afraid?" but surely he knew! somehow he knew! it was only that they had not yet been formed into globular words, this malaise so long enrapturing them both. 
his pearlflower here now with her parents, and her parents at last without an acrid bite between them;
and all the world seeming as if it was not poised upon a knife's edge.
but he wanted to hear it, mahler did, so that he could speak aloud his reassurances, his honesty, and create for phaedra a more sound and tangible world.
one in which, with hope, she did not have to be afraid.
rivenwood had meant to be a last stand and final beginning for mahler alone, but now it would be those he loved, forging far ahead — forging a stronger hope for the unseen months ahead, and the shadowpriest filled with a new resolution.