He glanced out the windows. No arrows, just flurries whirled past the glass. “What is,” he asked, “the point of it all?”

“Zachary?”

“The motions we go through. What is the point of it? One day I’ll be no more than a marble effigy for the few who care to remember. What is the point of this life?”

“Oh, Moonling,” Laren murmured, “you are in a dark mood.”

“I don’t know what I am.”

“You know what you are,” she replied softly.

He stood and stretched his back, and stepped down the dais. “I still don’t understand the point of it, the striving, the scheming, the battles, when everything ends anyway.”

“I think we need to take a walk.”

• • •

They walked the central courtyard gardens. The paths had not been shoveled since the morning, and the only other footprints they encountered belonged to squirrels and birds. Chickadees hopped among the branches of trees and shrubs bowed by the weight of snow. The flurries came slowly now, but the temperature was plunging again. The cold did help dissipate the haze Zachary had been mired in, though some leaden aspect of it weighed on him still.

For a long time, neither of them spoke, just ambled along caught in their own reveries, a pair of Weapons trailing some distance behind. Zachary enjoyed the silence. The gardens were a world unto themselves with only the noises of nature around them. They may as well have been miles away from the castle rather than surrounded by it.

“You have always been introspective,” Laren said. “In a way, that’s a good quality in a king. In another way, it just makes life harder on you.”

“My thoughts I can keep for myself as I choose. The rest, everything that I am, I cannot.”

“Such as the choice of the person with whom you may marry and spend your life?”

He did not reply. He had not expected to be so affected by Karigan’s departure, especially since she was heading off on a mission that should not be as hazardous as entering Blackveil. But she was only so recently returned to them, and the belief that she had been lost in Blackveil was still raw. He used to look out upon his petitioners during her long absence and imagine he saw her face among them, but it was always only a dream.

What if she had stayed in the future with Cade?

He remembered how it had been when she came home, how she pleaded to return to a disastrous future so she could be with Cade, how she was willing to give up her own life in the present to be with him, to probably die with him. He could still hear her shouting, “Let me go back! I must go back to him!”

She’d tried to hide her grief, but he’d seen how desolate she looked in unguarded moments when she thought no one was watching. He wished he could be the object of her regard. He was thankful to Cade Harlowe for his part in letting her go so she could come home, but also found himself envious of a man who did not exist in this time, and who was probably dead in his own.

And had Karigan stayed in the future or otherwise failed to return? Zachary would never have known her fate, and the loss and grief would be his.

“I blame myself sometimes,” Laren said.

He looked at her in surprise. “For what?”

“For being so eager for you to put the realm before your personal happiness.”

“You did not make that decision. I did, and it was the right one. The realm is stronger for it, the eastern provinces now bound more closely to Sacoridia’s heart through Coutre. We need that strength to face troubled times.”

“There are always troubled times,” Laren said, “although I’ll admit some are more troubling than others.” She reached out and knocked a clump of snow off a low-hanging bough. It sprang up, trailing the fragrance of balsam. “After seeing you today, it occurs to me that a realm is only as happy as its king.”

“You do not think I’m happy.”

“Sometimes, yes. You try to hide what’s inside, it’s what you do, and it’s a matter of survival for you as a king. But I know you, and you are not happy today. You were wondering what is the point of living.”

“Don’t you ever wonder those sorts of things?”

“Don’t turn this around on me.”

Sometimes he forgot how sharp her tongue could be, and he looked away to hide his smile. They meandered along a wayside path, and he could hear the trickle of water: King Jonaeus’ Spring, hidden behind snow-covered shrubbery and boulders. It rarely froze.

“Zachary,” Laren said in a hushed voice, “you came close to dying from your arrow wound, and you’ve been close to death in other ways. It is not unusual to explore the nature of life and its end.”

“Laren, please, you are lecturing me.”

“If I was lecturing, you would truly know it. My Riders certainly do.” She subsided for a moment. “Perhaps I am just trying to make myself feel better. It hurts me when you are in pain.”

“I am not in pain.”

“You know better than to lie to me.”

He smiled again, this time in chagrin. He’d gotten into enough trouble with her when he was a boy.

“After being as close to death as you were,” she continued, “it makes you aware of how fleeting life is, of its futility, especially when you can’t attain what makes you happiest.”

He felt an angry retort building that she would presume to know how it felt, but then he recalled she spoke from experience, from her own close calls and losses.