For a single heartbeat, Ashlynn stood frozen.
She'd been struggling just to hold herself together all day long. It had started right at dawn, with the terrifying feeling of something trying to rip Ollie away from her, and it had only gotten harder from there. Seeing the gleaming, golden spire of the abbey that had produced a monster like Percivus nearly shattered her control.
Going from that to the half-empty village where the dark windows of abandoned homes glared accusingly at her, as if they were blaming her for striking fear in the hearts of the families that should be living there, had further frayed her ability to keep her feelings and her powers under control.
In order to get through the day, she'd bottled it all up. She forced it down and locked it away behind walls of willpower and the desperate need to maintain control because she was the Mother of Trees, and she couldn't afford to break. Not again, not when so many people depended on her strength.
