“Julitta wants to go, and my mother has invited her, but I don’t think I’m really supposed to bring her,” Melina said at last with the air of one making a confession. “I think I’m supposed to be meeting Steffel Templeton and Ronan Baner. I think my mother wants to parade the candidates before me, and that would be a little harder to do with a jahla at my side.”

“So,” said Nolan, toying with his silverware, “in fact the infatuation has already waned.”

“No,” Melina said seriously. “No. Every time I think to myself, ‘I’m going to have to give this woman up sometime,’ I feel my heart stop. I find myself bargaining for more time. I tell myself, ‘Another year. I won’t even think about it until next spring. Next summer. Next fall.’ I don’t know what I’ll do when it actually comes down to it. When I have to marry and move on.”

“Then don’t do it,” Nolan said.

Melina spread her hands. On her face was a hurt smile. “I’m the oldest daughter. I owe my family something—I owe them everything. What else can I do?”

Nolan rose to his feet, too filled with a sudden rush of restless energy to sit quietly for another moment. “Let the land pass to a younger sister or a cousin or a niece. Let it fall into fallow ruin. What will it matter? Don’t let them marry you off to some stupid clod just to get yourself a daughter. How can you turn your back on love? If you had ever had it once and let it go, you wouldn’t even be able to talk about it now.”

She gaped up at him, seeming too stunned to move. “You’ve broken your engagement with Leesa,” she said.

He had turned to go, so he answered her over his shoulder. “Leesa,” he said, “is the least of my heartaches right now.” And he walked out of the restaurant without even glancing back to see if she would follow.

*   *   *

The next two weeks passed at an almost languorous pace. Nolan was aware of the unfolding of each minute, second by second. He watched time array itself before him as he would have watched the blooming of a flower through stop-motion photography. Small events jogged his memory, reminded him how it felt to be human, and indigo: This was the exact scent of summer asphalt in the city; this was the precise taste of homemade holiday bread. It was as if all these details had been wiped away by the invasion of the gulden lifestyle, and now his brain and his body had to relearn their most basic components.