It was mine, and it was formidable, and he liked it.

Do you know what that does to a person who has been told her whole life that the core of her is wrong?

It does not feel like flattery.

It feels like being seen for the first time and, against all expectation, not being found wanting.

I had built an entire empire on being unlovable-as-I-was, had made a virtue and a fortune of my solitude, precisely because I had accepted the family verdict that no one would ever want the actual me.

Zachary did not argue with the verdict.