"And yearning?" she asked.
"Yearning," Julian said, "is when another person's existence starts to matter to you. When they are no longer just part of a calculation, not a piece or a pawn."
He held her gaze.
"It is what makes you place someone above you."
The candle between them flickered once and then settled again.
"That is either," Olivia said carefully, "the most honest thing anyone has said to me in this house or the most sophisticated manipulation I've ever encountered."
"Which do you think," Julian almost smiled.
She stood. The movement brought her to her full height and closed some of the distance between them.
"I don't know," she said. "And that is the part that frightens me."
"I frighten you," Julian said.
"You have always frightened me," she said, with a directness that clearly surprised her. "But before... I knew what I was afraid of. I knew exactly what you were, what you wanted and what you were capable of... Now I am not sure."
