with each pronouncement germanicus grew harder in his rigid self, until it must feel to fennec as though she touched stone. her skill soon staunched the flow of blood, and the redness was only left to dry upon his silvered limb.

fennec turned his words back upon himself. the eagle could not internalize what she meant but he heard its reverberating message all the same.

he worked in failure. he measured in what he had not done instead of what he had managed to do.

he looked askance, skyward; she was correct and he felt himself staring down the knifeblade of a panic to lose her. to lose her genuine feeling.

"you are worth the truth, fennec."

there was a shattering inside him, a sundering. germanicus felt his throat raw with a sob that scraped the inside of his voice.

the facade of long-held guilt cracked, and with it, his long-held control.

and then it came. 

his days with crowfeather, where the boy and he had grown close, too close. of the almost-war in the sunspire, when the saints were routed. how crowfeather had gone to find nyra and been hatefully mauled. how he had abandoned the injured shadow in akashingo, believing this pure love to be only the infatuation of pupil for mentor. how he had come to mereo and married ruenna, setting his sights forward toward the foundation of their land and how he must be as husband and imperator.

germanicus in hoarsening voice told fennec that his love for the shadow had never gone, that he had only wound the boy's proverbial colors around a strong wrist and moved off without his companion.

he told her of arsenio, of their bond behind the palace walls, when germanicus had hired him as a mercenary and he had asked for tamar's freedom in payment. and yes, yes! the imperator told his wife of the girl belen, innocent and frightened, lured into the palace by himself and the greek man to replace tamar then.

his weakness, even then.

he told her of his love for ruenna. he told her of the agony the redsand woman had suffered, in quiet and with good humour, until it became too much. alivia and cornelius had gone with her then.

germanicus spoke of aquillius, the boy who had never come home, voice cracking as he admitted his eyes had never moved to search.

he told fennec of meeting meadow and the brief thing he had experienced, some movement of hope upon which he had not acted then. of reyson's involvement barring him further from meadow.

there was so much more to say. arsenio's scorn. arsenio's anger, to know that mereo stood beside makono and beside akashingo.

and then valiria, who could not longer stand a home without her mother, who had followed ruenna's trail into the sunshine land beyond the teekon.

"but i was with meadow that morning the cat struck. i was — i sought closure in her and very closely revenge for arsenio's humilation and for the abandonment of those who have gone to the vale. she would have returned to the vale bearing my children had not the beast found us there."

out. all of it, out. germanicus was drained.

"i called for epoch. reyson saw what had gone on. arsenio said i must never come so close again. his son gave me healing i did not deserve."

and now he was here.

"so yes, fennec. i judge by those who have gone. i judge by what i have done. what other measuring can it be?"

silence, now; throat worn and heart fading.