Persephone’s mother tells her: never settle.

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It’s why she’s denied suitor after suitor, despite Zeus’s insistence that she needs a spouse to be recognized as a proper goddess. She wants to marry for love, not status. So she’s furious when Zeus goes behind her back and promises her to Hades, tricking the lord of the underworld into kidnapping her to his realm. While he’s horrified when he learns that this arrangement was made without her or Demeter’s consent, the damage is done—Persephone is trapped in the land of the dead, engaged to a man she does not know, much less love.

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At least, not at first. But Hades is charming and kind, and he treats Persephone with respect and admiration. The more time she spends with him, the more Persephone feels the stirrings of the love she always wanted to marry for, and a longing for the power being Hades’s bride would bring her. But she knows what it would mean, to become the queen of the underworld: turning her back on the world and work she takes such pride in, and never again seeing the mother she cares so deeply for. And nothing, not even love, is worth settling for that… is it?

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Trigger warnings: kidnapping, human death by freezing, a cis character being called by a birthname they disown, against their desires 

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Heat level: Lots of (sometimes tragic) yearning, with two semi-explicit sex scenes.