Fox's Glade someone only you could want

tooth to lip, a bloom of heat spreading upward along her limb. silvertongue looked in soft wariness and greater daring toward wren, worrying now the inside of her jaw. wren had given so much, and so she found herself offering the same, unloading herself of all the sharp-edged memories: the night of her arrival in akashingo, how the scarlet man who had found her cold and lost outside the palace had struck a fellahin in front of her as he brought her to pharaoh. the sound of his voice as he spoke in coldness of that servant, and the confusion of the queen's hatred at once. the way that germanicus had spoken as if she were not inside that room, and how he had talked of debts, of her taking on a debt. after that, he had taken the crimson man and the shy, sad girl away and left the poor shivering stranger there. silvertongue's voice forged on; she tightened her grip upon wren's paw and continued, telling of how ramesses had invited her to leave, to freeze in the snow after she had lost her parents, and how he had accepted her inability to move as reason to keep her. the training thereafter, sent softly from one kind fellahin to another, to learn these arts which pleased pharaoh. the shaping of her mind, the culmination in being presented to pharaoh and queen together. silvertongue paused here, her mouth creating a small sardonic smile as she described how the royal woman continued to demand, demand of her. the priest! the chaos of akashingo; crowfeather, her love for him, and the eventual purchase of the courtesan she had been by blackwater. "up the coast, to the sunspire. i found the canyon where germanicus ruled. and i found crowfeather again." defiance, hissed.