Julian leaned down slightly, closing the final inch between them. He raised his hand and boldly pinched the Empress Regent's flawless, terrifyingly pale cheek, tapping it lightly with his fingers.
"Just remember it, Elara," Julian whispered, the raw devastation in his eyes replaced by a dangerous, gleaming spark of absolute defiance. "If you are a menace, then I am your partner. So just think about how much of a menace 'I' could be."
Elara looked up at him, her glass-bead eyes completely unblinking.
She did not swat his hand away. She simply stared, her internal processors working at maximum capacity to make sense of this catastrophic deviation from standard human behavior.
