She’d survived Atlas’s Trials, and then his son had fallen in love with her. Rion saw the change in Nadir. He appeared . . . softer, but not in a weak way, rather in a way that only made him stronger. It reminded Rion of the way he’d once felt about Rachel and how he’d always felt towards the woman he remembered.

His gaze returned to her as he finally accepted that he’d never get her back. While this might be her physical body, she had died, and this place had nothing to do with reality.

Herric watched the girl and Nadir with a fevered light in his eyes, and that’s when Rion realized how lonely the Lord of the Underworld must have been for all these years. He was of sound mind—for all intents and purposes a living man—but he’d been surrounded by only death and these vacant corpses for so long.

Rion’s hand gripped the railing as he watched his son weave in and out, constantly checking in on the girl.

Lor.

A simple name. A strong name.

He didn’t understand why he always refused to use it, but maybe a small, buried part of him felt shame for what he’d done. Maybe in his quest for power, he’d lost sight of everything. He’d never been a good man. He knew that. He’d never pretended to be anything but the black-hearted villain he was.

But something about Lor and Nadir cracked a tiny fissure in his chest.

His gaze slid to Rachel once again, and for the first time in centuries, he saw everything he’d lost. Instead of a life with a woman he loved, he’d chosen the hollow emptiness of his power. And then, when he’d made that decision, he’d regretted it. Instead of acknowledging that he’d made his own bed, he made his mistake everyone else’s fault. Meora. Nadir. Amya.

What a monster he’d been.

Maybe if he’d tried, Rion could have found a version of happiness. Maybe if he’d looked beyond himself and his selfish desires, he could have been the partner and father his family had deserved. It had taken three hundred years, but finally, he recognized what he had done.

Watching Lor and Nadir together, he saw the love they felt for one another and that she had chosen to put herself in danger for him. She loved him enough to agree to this test, and she was doing everything she could to keep him alive.

She was noble. She was nothing like her grandmother had been, and if someone like that could love his son with such reckless abandon, then maybe Rion was the one who’d been wrong from the very beginning.