She shook her head because she had nothing to say to that. “So, how did you entertain yourself all day while I was gone—or sleeping?” she asked.

“I watched the monitor a little. I picked up a word here and there, but I couldn’t really tell what they were saying. And I worked on a project of my own. Something I should be doing at the lab, but I thought I could get a start on it here.”

He fell silent a moment, thinking about something, and then he looked over at her with a smile. “Though it’s hard for me to imagine going back to a job at the lab,” he said. “Working with Cerisa as if nothing had happened. Living an ordinary life. It’s as if the door has closed on the past and there’s no way back to it.”

“You might feel differently once you’re in the city.”

“Maybe.”

“Or maybe not,” she said, with assumed energy. “Maybe now’s the time to marry your fiancée—what’s her name?”

“Leesa.”

“And move back in-country. Forget the city. Forget Cerisa. Forget that you were ever in Geldricht.”

He gave her a small smile that seemed full of pain. “That seems even harder to imagine,” he said.

“Forgetting Geldricht?”

“Marrying Leesa.”

She was silent because her heart ballooned up, squeezed aside her lungs, choked off the passages to her throat. She merely looked at him, arching her brows as if to ask the casual question.

Nolan shrugged, smiled, glanced away, glanced back. “For so long,” he said, “she was the epitome of everything I wanted. We were betrothed when I was fourteen. I had known her my whole life. She is exactly what any high-caste boy would dream of. She’s beautiful. She’s charming. She’s sweet-tempered—which is a rare thing among indigo women, as you may have noticed. And she loves me. She’s the only woman I’ve ever been with. She’s the only woman I wanted to be with. Until—”

“Until?” Kit managed to ask.

“Until recently. The past few months. She wants to be married later this year and go live on her grandmother’s estate. That means I would leave the city forever. Be just like any other blueskin man, happy and anonymous. Raise our children, scheme to see our daughters marry well. Once that was the only life I could dream of. Now it frightens me.”

“So what life would you prefer,” she asked, “in a perfect world?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t thought about it. I didn’t realize there were other options. I guess I’d want to do something worthwhile with my life. Continue my work at the lab. Study to become a doctor. Do something that mattered.”

“Marrying and having children matters,” she said.