Foggy Bottom Way [m] el mar

scarcely did silvertongue register the collision of bone to blood, teeth to skin. andromache put to earth another, a boy who the sharpfang did not see, and so she did not see how akin to her great enemy he was. she saw only him, how the years had been unkind to the man; how the crags of his face had not been so pronounced. how he lied in coldness and left her to a fate unimaginable. how he had known, and yes; she saw his guilt. his anguish. 

and it was not enough

a young man pushed between her righteous teeth and the roman's sallow face; her eyes snapped to his, and she saw, she saw; oh; "oh," and laughter bubbled over, spilling at the feet of the pale woman's growling. "are these your children?" silvertongue asked, lightly; coldly. she stepped back to regard them now as a trio. her eyes flickered over them with maddened amusement, and beneath that mantle, a hateful bitterness that he should have been father and husband, that he should have been able to build the pillars of a wanted life while her heart had starved all this time. gaze to the boy, to the girl, to germanicus himself. crowfeather, stricken, wren, shocked. again; crowfeather; devastated. akavir, reeling. and shadowpup had suffered the worst, though even in this second the woman who bore her did not know the agonies of her own daughter. but had that day not been her very own breaking? the first of the last? "they do not know, do they, germanicus?" or else they would not stand in her way. a small silver paw raised, to point at the man, and at last her visage cracked and out from its breaking did saltwater flow once more. "you will tell them now." if she could not possess what she wished, silvertongue would rake all things from his golden table; it was more than deserved. it was the fate to which he had bound them both when he had sold her to the palace.