Rion marched over to his desk and pulled out the oval picture frame in the top drawer. He traced the edge, his fingers touching the glass. Rachel beamed out at him, her luscious red lips stretched into a smile, part softness and part seduction.

That smile had managed to rip his heart out every time.

He’d been thinking about her more and more often lately. It felt like pressure was squeezing him from every side. He kept trying to make up for the void she’d left. But as his rule had stretched on for centuries, the hollow feeling in his chest had never closed up. He’d traded her for this life, and nothing—not his crown, not his magic, not his power—had come anywhere close to making him feel the way she had made him feel.

After her death, he’d broken. Whatever sliver of hope and light that lived inside him was gone. He’d given her up, and then he’d lost her forever. If she’d stayed with him, she would never have found herself wrapped up with the wrong sorts of people. She would be here, standing at his side.

The years had become a blur, and now he stood here facing the endlessness of immortality with this jagged chip lodged in his heart. Rion shook his head, crushing the picture to his chest, as his pulse threatened to burst through his ribs.

He’d already lost count of how many drinks he’d had today, so what was another?

He placed the frame on the desk and strode to the other side of the room, picking up a decanter of clear liquid. He sniffed it, but it hardly mattered what it was. The servants filled these almost daily, but their contents were irrelevant, provided they bordered on toxic. As long as it allowed him to numb himself for a few hours, he would have drunk the Lord of the Underworld’s piss.

Speaking of which, the source of Rion’s stress also had much to do with what lurked in that throne room. He was terrified to speak with Herric and tell him he’d failed yet again. How could it be this hard to capture one girl?

Without bothering with a glass, Rion lifted the decanter and drained half of it in several large swallows. Then he wiped the back of his mouth with his sleeve and closed his eyes, waiting for it to filter into his blood and just . . . take him away.

But it wasn’t enough. These days, it was never enough. He drained the rest of the decanter and then hurled it at the wall, eliciting a small hit of adrenaline at the smash. But the relief was fleeting, and again, he started pacing.